Locked Rooms
by Winter Puffin
Summary: When is it acceptable to interfere in a Champion's destiny?   New Content posted Feb 16, 2011.
1. Chapter 1

_Puffin's Note - This story is darker in tone than most work I've seen in this fandom, hence the rating. This has been quite fun to write, and I hope it willl be fun to read. As this is a work in progress, reviews are always appreciated, and may just help succeeding chapters appear in a more timely fashion._

_The Fine Print - Characters and situations belong to their resective authors. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended._

* * *

It was three days since Alice had left and Tarrant was afraid that killing Time was quite out of the question. Before, when he had been waiting for Alice to come back (and she had been dreadfully, unconscionably late, but never mind that now) killing Time had worked, because he knew that there was a definite date he was attempting to pry from Time's rigid grip - Gribling Day, the date of Alice's eventual return to Underland. Secure in the knowledge that the date would arrive sooner or later, Tarrant had been, if not content, at least resigned to waiting through the inevitable span of intervening, mediocre hours.

But now that Frabjous Day had come and gone, there was nothing in the Oraculum that indicated one way or another whether Alice would ever come back to Underland. It surprised Tarrant that he had not thought to ponder this before (as most things concerning Alice were worthy of many hours of deep pontification) and he decided finally that he had never considered the possibility of Alice's future beyond Frabjous Day because he had simply assumed that if Alice survived, then she would of course have stayed in Underland. And had Alice (don't think it, horrible crawling terrifying word) - had Alice _word-that-begins-with-a-D_ - well, in that case, Time would be the least among things to be killed that day. Including, Tarrant had thought, himself.

But Alice had won, and had won for herself the right to end her own story in her own way. Tarrant had simply never foreseen that she would chose to leave. This, he reflected, should not have come as such a surprise. After all, she had always left before.

The very worst part was this. Tarrant had a nasty suspicion that he could, if he wanted (and he did want, he wanted very much), go to the aboveground world and see Alice, perhaps speak with her, even perhaps (perhaps maybe possibly), ask her to return. He could tell her how beautiful the flowers looked in the forests along the outskirts of Witzend. Describe the incomparable loveliness of the White Castle of Mamoreal viewed in the light of the full moon. Speak eloquently of the many delectable varieties of tea cloistered away in his cupboards in the windmill. And then tell her how unfathomably tedious he found it all without her about to share it with.

* * *

It was five days since Alice had left and Tarrant was speaking with the White Rabbit. The rabbit had listened patiently; now he crinkled up his lip and sighed.

"I have been to the aboveground world several times," he admitted. "But the paths there and back always change, you know. And not all of the paths are safe roads."

"But you found a safe road before, "protested the hatter. "Twice!"

"Yes," sighed the rabbit. "But both times I had directions straight from the White Queen herself, and there were still some _very_ tricky moments. Not to mention a nasty run-in with a fox. And even so, I didn't so much find Alice as allow her to find _me_. She's gotten here three times now, remember. If she wants to come back, I dare say she'll manage it somehow."

Tarrant found that answer entirely unsatisfactory, touching as it did on the unsettling notion that Alice might not want to come back at all. Though the rabbit's words did bring up another curious question.

"But if the paths between worlds are so dangerous, how does Alice always find the right road?" Tarrant asked.

"Haven't the foggiest," said the rabbit, rubbing his ears.

After leaving the White Rabbit, he had tried discussing the subject with Mirana. The White Queen had only given him an infinitely sad look, and said, "My champion has won the right to her own ending, whatever she wishes that to be. We have no right to interfere with her choice."

He had tried to explain to the Queen about killing Time, and wanting things he knew he shouldn't, and the problems of enjoying a good cup of tea now that Alice had gone away again, but the words he had so carefully gathered to explain his thoughts chose that moment to scamper out of their paddock like unruly ponies. It hardly seemed worth the effort to gather them all up again, so he simply shook his head, and walked dejectedly out of the room. Several hours later, Tarrant was surprised to discover that he was still walking, his feet having set him on the path back to the windmill at some point during the interval.

* * *

It was nine days since Alice had left and Tarrant was lying on his back in the windmill, looking up at a tiny crack in the ceiling he had just now noticed. He had once thought that killing Time while he waited for Gribling Day had been a distasteful task, nearly as horrible as over boiled vegetables or a sloppily glued satin lining. This, Tarrant had to admit, was worse. This was waiting when no good could come of the thing being waited for. It reminded him uncomfortably of the Dreadful Time, in Salazen Grum. (_Time had been screaming, hadn't it, Tarrant?)_

Tarrant thought he had recalled there being a rather elegant wooden worktable in this room, once upon a time, and an overstuffed chair of a particularly bewitching shade of mauve. But he must have been mistaken, for while there was furniture stuffing scattered plentifully across the floor, as well as many thin, brittle-looking slats of wood, Tarrant could see no way that such ragtag odds and ends could ever be made to resemble an overstuffed chair or a worktable and why _is_ a raven like a -

Tarrant shied away from the thought, inexplicably certain that thinking of ravens or writing desks at the present time was likely to precipitate a Bad State of Affairs. He rubbed at his eyes and noticed as he did so that his hands were, equally inexplicably, studded with many small wooden splinters. Those were new, he thought. So was the broken glass where, in a more usual state of affairs, a window would normally be expected to be.

Gingerly, Tarrant rolled onto his stomach and rested his forehead against the cool wooden slats of the windmill floor. He had killed time often enough, he mused. It seemed clear to him that Time was now, hour by hour, cheerfully repaying the favor.

* * *

The Idea made its first appearance at some point during the tenth day, and it was not five minutes after making the acquaintance of this particular Idea that he and the Idea were back on their way to Mamoreal. In Tarrant's opinion, it was all in all simply a splendid Idea, beautiful and bubbling and quite resembling something Alice herself might think up. While he walked, he set the Idea to work gathering up all of the wooly, wandering words he would need to fully explain the Idea to the White Queen when he arrived. The Idea was very good at its job, gently coaxing the words one by one, whispering delicious thoughts in their ears - promises of sugar cubes and currycomb brushes and tangled yellow hair. By the time Tarrant and the Idea arrived at Mamoreal, the words were lined up and waiting,tossing their heads and impatiently drumming their feet. When Tarrant found the White Queen, at work on a potion that looked like a mockingbird's song, he had only to open the gate and let the words trot happily out.

"You said that Alice has chosen to return to the Aboveground world and that we should not interfere with her choice," he said.

Mirana solemnly inclined her head.

"But choices have a way of coming and going, do they not? You make a choice one day and find later that the choice you thought you made has turned into something else. Or, you make a choice, and you make it as carefully as you can, and it is so beautiful that you think you will keep it up on your mantle for ever. But sometimes the choice becomes something you cannot bear to look at, and you can't ever unmake it; the seams are too strong to tear out. You must lock it somewhere out of sight or you'll go mad, do you see?"

Mirana nodded her head again. "Yes," she said. "Many people have made choices they wish they could undo. But thankfully, such terrible choices are not made often. Or at all, if one is lucky."

Tarrant gathered up the best words he could for this, the crux of his argument. "Would Alice ever unmake a choice?" he whispered. "Is there a moment, even one, when she would choose differently?"

"Alice's choices, and regrets, and the consequences of each, are hers and hers alone," said the Queen sternly.

"But is there a moment?" Tarrant insisted. "Is there a moment where she would choose differently? Because if there is, and I brought her back, then it wouldn't be interfering, it would be helping, because it would be what she wants. If she wants. If she wants at all." The words were in definite danger of breaking out of their paddock again. Tarrant took a shaky breath and continued in a small voice. "I want. It's all I can feel, I can't breathe for the wanting, sometimes. And if I want so much, can't she ever feel the slightest little bit of wanting? Even once? Even for just one moment?"

"Tarrant Hightopp, I do not know the answer to that. That is only for Alice to know,and for those that she might choose to confide in."

"But you can look, can't you?" demanded Tarrant. "You've looked before - you knew where to send the White Rabbit, you must have looked, as it got closer and closer to Frabjous Day and she still hadn't come back..."

Tarrant trailed off as the Queen glanced uneasily back at her potion. Something in her expression told Tarrant that he had guessed correctly. She _had_ looked. With the fate of her kingdom, her crown and possibly her life, all staked on the actions of this strange aboveground girl, glancing into that girl's life would have been a difficult temptation to resist. The White Queen stared into the mockingbird potion for a long moment before she turned back to Tarrant, laying her hands palm-down on the wooden worktable.

"I... possess the ability to see glimpses of Alice's world, yes, but -"

"Then you can look for a moment! You can see if there is a moment that she would change! And if there isn't one, I shan't ever bother anyone about Alice ever again!" Tarrant promised.

The White Queen held up a hand, forestalling him. "You wish me to look for a moment in Alice's aboveground life where she would be... receptive... to returning to Underland with you?"

"Yes," said Tarrant, enormously pleased that the White Queen had grasped the essentials of his Idea.

"I will look," said the Queen with reluctance. "Wait here."

The Queen must have found such a moment very quickly, for she was not gone very long at all. It was barely enough time for the hatter to begin to feel nervous, contemplating the idea that perhaps there would be no such moment after all. What then? The Idea had nothing to say to that, and the words grazing nervously outside the paddock weren't very helpful either. So Tarrant paced, and looked at the potion that resembled a mockingbird's song and wondered, if mockingbirds imitated the calls of other birds, how anyone could tell whether it was a mockingbird's song at all, and if a mockingbird could imitate the call of a writing desk -

"There is such a moment," said the Queen in a hollow voice. "When Alice our Champion _may_ choose to return to Underland, should you venture to her world to ask her."

"May choose," Tarrant repeated doubtfully, but despite the dubious implications of those particular words, hope was fizzing in his veins like tiny sparkling bubbles. "But what about _will_ choose, or _will_ stay or -"

"I do not know," said the White Queen. "Understand, Tarrant, I only see what _may_ transpire, not what _will_ transpire. Few moments in the future are entirely fixed, and that is especially true concerning Alice."

Tarrant had to admit that that made a certain sense. After all, not even Alice herself seemed to know exactly what Alice would do from one moment to the next. She simply _did,_ exactly that, and part of the joy of being around her was allowing oneself to become caught up in the resulting consequences. Tarrant was certain that if he could get to The Moment, whatever and whenever it was, that he could convince Alice to come back to Underland - if anyone could, he was the hatter for the job. Scrumptious teas, he thought to himself. Moonlit gardens. Lovely flowers.

The hatter's elation was palpable. "How can I get to the moment?" he asked the White Queen frantically. "Is there a road that will take me there? Or a rabbit hole, or -"

"Come with me," the Queen said, and she did not sound pleased at all.

* * *

The White Queen led him to a tower room on the western side of Mamoreal, Tarrant following eagerly behind her, and Tarrant's Idea bouncing giddily behind them both. The Queen stopped first in the kitchen to select a stoppered jug half-full of a dark liquid and then, more ominously, at the pantry to select a wide bowl and a small, pointy-looking knife. Tarrant swallowed nervously at the sight of the knife, suddenly smelling a sick aroma of rusting iron and dripping stones, hearing the clatter of chains and the yowling scream of taut ropes, when before there was nothing but the vanilla-tinted breezes waving through Mamoreal's airy corridors. The hatter's eyes opened very wide, and it was only by thinking in a very determined fashion of Alice, and the imminent prospect of seeing her again, that he was able to avoid entering into another Bad State of Affairs.

Nevertheless, Tarrant obediently followed the Queen, the Idea poking him firmly in the back whenever he showed signs of slowing his steps.

Eventually, they came to a small room near the top of one of the towers, bare but for a small round table and an empty mirror frame. The room smelled dusty, despite the vanilla, as if no one had been inside in quite a long while. Tarrant examined the mirror frame curiously. It was made of wood, and taller than Tarrant even wearing his hat. The heavy frame was carved with what looked like ivy, although hadn't he heard that the ivy with three leaves wasn't the good sort of ivy? Botanical perversity aside, it seemed to be in all other respects a lovely mirror - aside from its distinct lack of glass.

"That is your door," said the White Queen from the table, where she had carefully laid down the bowl and the _word-beginning-with-k_. "Or it will be, once we have finished the preparations." She unstoppered the small bottle and carefully poured the contents into bowl.

"But understand, Tarrant," the Queen said in a velvet voice. "Where you are going, I cannot give you a road back. I know of no safe paths that lead back to Underland where you will be. You will be on Alice's road from the moment you step across, do you understand? She makes her own paths, but there is no telling where they may lead her. Or you, should you choose to follow her."

Alice's road, the hatter thought. Tarrant had the distinct feeling that he had already walked on Alice's road briefly during her previous visits. If so, it was bound to be enchanting, dangerous and entirely unexpected. Surely there would be no better road to travel, especially if he walked it alongside Alice herself.

"Are you resolved to this course, Tarrant Hightopp?" the White Queen asked solemnly.

"I am," he replied

"Then we need only await one final ingredient," said the Queen. "As Alice returned to the aboveground world with Jabberwock blood, so, too, is blood required for you to follow her." She matter-of-factly spun the knife on the table so that the handle was facing the hatter, and stepped back from the table. "Three drops should be sufficient."

Tarrant would have backed away from the table as well, had his knees been feeling more up to the challenge of supporting him. Leaning heavily against the table, he shook his head violently, less in denial than to try and get the horrible iron-and-damp smell out of his nose. "Blood?" he asked in a faint voice.

"Yes," said the White Queen in a kinder tone. "Blood, freely spilled or forcibly taken, is one of the most powerful ingredients of all. Indeed, there is no more precious thing in all of Underland. Without it, this potion won't have the power even to get you to the other side of Mamoreal, let alone all the way to Alice's world."

"And need it be _my_ blood, in particular?"

"That would be best," the Queen said calmly.

The Idea stepped next to Tarrant, bobbing its head in an encouraging manner. _Alice,_ Tarrant reminded himself. _I'm doing this for Alice._

With that thought, the Hatter shut his eyes and held out his right hand over the bowl.

"I rather think," he murmured, "that it would be altogether better if you were to, erm -"

The hatter heard the Queen back even further away from the table. Opening his eyes, he saw her holding a hand over her mouth and nose and looking a little taken aback.

The White Queen lowered her hand immediately upon meeting Tarrant's eyes, and her face slipped serenely into its habitual expression of tranquility.

"I am afraid I cannot help you," she said wistfully. "My vows prevent me from harming any living creature, even in such a case as this." She licked her lips nervously and made no move to come any closer to Tarrant, the table or the _word-beginning-with-k_.

Very well, thought Tarrant, forcing himself to look at the blade. _For Alice,_ he reminded himself. _I am doing this for Alice. Three drops of blood for Alice. Hardly anything at all, really. You loose more blood that that every time you try to sew without your favorite thimble, so why -_

Without another thought, Tarrant ripped off his hat and snatched one of the long straight pins he kept tucked into the ribbon. Sniffing disdainfully in the direction of the knife, he stuck the pin firmly into the tip of his finger and just as firmly pulled it out. Blood welled at the tip and one drop rolled off his finger and into the bowl.

The potion seemed to actually take notice of Tarrant's contribution, glowing white for a moment in the spot where the droplet had landed, and continuing to glow for nearly a second after the blood had dissolved. It was actually rather pretty, thought Tarrant as he watched the second and third drops react the same way.

"Enough," said the White Queen, licking her lips again. "We cannot have it growing greedy."

Not entirely sure what that meant, Tarrant tucked the pin back into his hat , returned the hat to his head and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket to dab at his finger.

Covering her mouth again, the White Queen stepped towards the table and examined the potion with a critical eye. Seemingly satisfied, she picked up the bowl, carefully keeping her face averted from the liquid. Turning towards the frame, she tossed the liquid directly at the space where the glass ought to be.

Except the liquid did not go through the frame at all, but clung to the empty space between the wood, dripping and running down along the open air until it had completely covered the void in the empty frame like a black sheet. Tarrant stepped around the table to look at it more closely.

As he did so, he had to revise his initial assessment. The not-glass wasn't black, exactly, though it was dark, and very glossy, but it still apparently functioned as a mirror. Or at least, it was reflecting something, though he couldn't at first make out what it was. The shape seemed rather pale and lanky, and he could hardly make out any features at all about its face. It was only when he moved to scratch his head, and the shape copied his gesture, that he realized that this odd reflection was supposed to be him. The hatter straightened his cuffs and regarded the not-Tarrant dubiously.

The White Queen stepped beside him, her reflection joining his in the glass. She was just as pale in the dark liquid as he was, except for her eyes and lips, so large and dark that the distorted reflection looked like nothing so much as a skull. Standing on his other side, Tarrant was surprised to note, was a smaller figure in a dark blue dress, which blended into the dim substance of the mirror well enough that it had not been immediately visible to the hatter.

After an initial moment of surprise (pale skin, blue dress, long curling hair), Tarrant identified the figure not as Alice but as his Alice-ish Idea. Tarrant thought it odd that he hadn't noticed it creeping up as it had, for it was standing extremely close to Tarrant, as if it had recently been whispering in his ear. Both of its arms were wrapped firmly around Tarrant's middle. It occurred to the hatter for the first time that this Idea of his seemed to be an extremely Possessive Idea.

"You must step through quickly," said the White Queen, still covering her mouth with one hand. "The mirror will only last for another minute at most." Tarrant could already see where the liquid was slowly dripping from the bottom of the frame and onto the floor. The unusual mirror was already beginning to disappear.

_Alice_,he whispered to himself. It was ten days since Alice had left and for the first time in ten days, that particular word was entirely and unequivocally a happy one. Nudging the Idea back to a more respectable distance, Tarrant straightened his cravat, settled his hat more firmly onto his head, and stepped forward.

"Fairfarren, Tarrant," the White Queen called from behind him.

"Fairfarren, my Queen," the hatter replied softly. _And well met, Alice._

Closing his eyes at the last moment, the hatter stepped into the mirror.

* * *

_Puffin's Note - I am anticipating this fic to be six or seven chapters in length; one additional chapter is already written, however, it doesn't appear sequentially after this, as I very rarely write my stuff from beginning to end. (Currently I'm writing the last chapter. After than, I'll go back and give y'all chapter two.)_

_Questions or comments? Please review, and thanks for taking to time to read._


	2. Chapter 2

_Puffin's Note - a long chapter; hope it was worth the wait. And thank you to everyone who's following along._

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* * *

  
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**Chapter 2**

In the course of pondering his Idea, Tarrant had tried to think of possible situations, possible Moments, in which Alice might be prevailed upon to return to Underland. The most logical place to begin was to identify the Moment when Alice had chosen to return to Underland - the Moment that produced Gribling Day, and all of what followed. Unfortunately, of Alice's recent return, Tarrant knew only what he had managed to gather from the White Rabbit - something about a large garden party, and a funny-looking man whose father had known Alice's father and whose mother had asked Alice to marry someone. Although Tarrant was entirely ignorant of how these things usually worked in the aboveground world, it seemed to him that this was an entirely unsatisfactory way of arranging marriages. Little wonder Alice had been a bit put out. Also, the hatter still had no idea whether Alice had said yes or no to this secondhand proposal, and this had been the cause of a number of hours of unsettling thought.

As to why Alice had come to Underland as a child, Tarrant had a suspicion that the aboveground world simply didn't have enough magic in it to suit a girl such as her. Alice certainly might be willing to return to Underland if she became bored with the aboveground world. It seemed to Tarrant the the aboveground world must be inherently dull, at least as the White Rabbit had described it, and Tarrant knew that Alice did not tolerate boredom particularly well. But on the other hand, Alice had repeatedly chosen to go back there, so the hatter supposed the aboveground world must have some advantages that were not immediately apparent to a rabbit.

The most disturbing theory to the hatter's mind was that Alice had only come to Underland because it had been foretold that she would. And since there were no more foretellings, there would be no more Alice. But Alice had never been one for blindly following her destiny. In fact, Tarrant felt that Alice's destiny must have a difficult time keeping up with Alice herself.

Alice might return if she grew to miss... someone... people - oh, anybody really. Surely she would want to visit the White Queen, and the bandersnatch had been pining, poor thing; she'd want to see how the beast was getting on. This was assuming that Alice thought to miss any of her friends before she forgot them entirely.

Alice might leave the aboveground world altogether if she thought herself in danger, if a return to Underland were a way to avoid some horrid or desperate situation. But the hatter could not really picture Alice running away from anything, even if the running would take her to somewhere as wonderful as Underland. It was just not in her nature to back away from a task, any task, once she had really made up her mind to do it.

In short, there were many situations the hatter had thought not to expect. But the particular situation Tarrant found himself in was a situation he hadn't even considered not expecting .

* * *

Tarrant realized he was underwater with just enough time to shut his mouth as well as his eyes, which helped to limit, though not entirely prevent, the hatter swallowing a quantity of water. The salt stung at his nose; he flailed at the water in a panic, with no idea of where the surface was until the moment his head broke the water. Tarrant gasped, paddling in an effort to keep his head above the water, as the waves around him doing a credible job of forcing it below.

"Alice," he shouted as soon as he could get his breath, and again, louder. "Alice! Help!" He heard nothing but his own splashing. Very quickly, Tarrant realized he did not actually expect an answer, as his immediate panic subsided and he was able to look around. Surrounding him was sky (blue, hazy, faint traces of high clouds) and water (grey-blue, warmish, and salt). Nothing else. No Alice, no sign of land or people or boats, hardly any horizon at all. Waves and waves and undifferentiated blue.

Tarrant paddled and stared for many minutes, hoping to see anything that might alter his initial assessment of his situation. For many minutes, nothing new presented itself - only more blue. Very reluctantly, Tarrant began to entertain the notion that nothing new was ever going to present itself, no matter how many minutes he was prepared to wait. He was alone, at sea, with no indication that anyone was nearby who might fancy rescuing him, no boat or land or anything that he might swim towards. He was in all likelihood doomed, and he was also missing his hat.

At least, thought Tarrant, it was a very tolerable shade of blue...

Regardless of expectation,Tarrant determined rather quickly that he would try to stretch out as many minutes as might be possible. There were outside chances, weren't there, and besides, it was the principle of the thing. Do not go gentle into that_, _wasn't it, or maybe, take arms against a sea of... No, that wasn't it at all. It was important, but Tarrant couldn't quite remember how it went. Anyhow, there weren't any arms to be taken, and Tarrant had no illusions that the hours remaining him were going to be gentle. He was already beginning to feel the slightest bit thirsty.

It took Tarrant several frustrating minutes to remove his boots, as he could not reach the laces without his head ducking beneath the water. Sensibly, Tarrant knew that he ought to let go his coat as well, but if he was going to drown either way, it seemed like a terrible waste of a perfectly good waistcoat. At least, it had been a perfectly good waistcoat until perhaps twenty minutes ago.

Tarrant experimented with floating on his back, finding that if he leaned back so that his forehead was just touching the water, he could keep himself afloat quite easily with only small kicks from his legs. The downside to this was, he was now looking directly up at the sun; distractingly bright even with his eyes squeezed shut. He grappled in his waistcoat pocket for a handkerchief, wrung the worst of the water out, and laid it across his face. Better. Slightly.

Tarrant vaguely wondered if the White Queen had any idea that this was where the looking glass door would lead. Probably not - she would have warned him, or at least suggested a change of attire. Or perhaps a dinghy.

It occurred to Tarrant that he had no idea where he even was - and very slight prospects of living long enough to ever find out. It seemed evident that the looking glass had sent him to the wrong place. Perhaps this was not even Alice's world at all. Didn't the phrase 'aboveground world' strongly imply the presence of ground? And the White Rabbit had never mentioned to Tarrant anything about oceans - and he knew the rabbit hated getting wet. Even dodged the tea that Thackeray threw, poor sport...

Tarrant's thoughts settled around the windmill with all of the intensity of his conviction that he wouldn't be seeing it again. He would be awfully partial to a cup of tea just now, even the wretched stuff Mallymkin brewed, leaving the tea bag in the cup as she drank it; it was terribly uncivilized.

Giving a final look about the horizon, Tarrant opened the gate to his paddock of words and stepped inside, making sure the stile was firmly shut behind him. He walked out among his words, allowing himself to drift away from reality to a greater degree than he usually considered wise. He could not ignore them forever, thirst and heat and tiring limbs, but he might nip off for a few hours while they weren't looking.

He found the Alice-word quickly enough. It pricked up its ears in greeting and nuzzled affectionately at his pockets. Tarrant wrapped his fingers into its curly, yellow hair, and together they ambled across the field, heading in no particular direction at all.

* * *

Tarrant spluttered back to reality the moment he felt someone grab his arm. He jerked away automatically - their grip had been very tight - and gasped for air at the same moment his head ducked underwater. A terrible error in timing; when the strange arms returned, he was in no condition to shrug them off again. Tarrant felt himself being hauled out of the water, tumbling roughly down onto a wooden deck, where he lay for a moment, coughing and rubbing at his eyes.

He could see, from his current position, the bottom of the wooden boat he was lying in, a few bench seats between the thwarts, part of an oar, and two pairs of well-patched, salt-stained boots. Tarrant tilted his head to get a better look at the presumed owners of said boots; the movement was greeted with a volley of words that oughtn't have a place in any respectable person's vocabulary.

"Erm -" Tarrant began.

"My God, 'e's pale as a corpse already!" said one of the men.

"Would of been one, too, afore much longer," agreed the second fellow. Tarrant felt an inquisitive poke to his ribs, and groaned. "Bit out of it."

"Eh Morris," the first voice said brightly. "Do you reckon we can still go through 'is pockets?"

Tarrant pushed himself upright with an outraged "I say -" but the second man had already slapped away the first man's acquisitive fingers. "Leave off, you bloody idiot - we're in full view of the ship."

Tarrant rolled onto his back, fingers curling protectively around the hem of his coat. We'll see about _go through his pockets_, he thought. There were two men kneeling in the boat alongside him, both staring at him with a sort of curious, disinterested expression that one might use to examine a particularly unusual species of insect. The taller of the two had a nose that looked as if it had been broken at least twice. His companion, called Morris apparently, was skinnier, with pale hair bleached almost white, and a red, peeling sunburn across much of his face.

"Doesn't look much like a Chinaman, now does 'e?" he said.

"Well, you never can tell," replied the taller man, who had stepped across one of the bench seats and was slipping the pair of oars into the water.

"Can't hurt to ask." Then, to Tarrant, "Do you speak English?"

It seemed to Tarrant an odd question, since they weren't speaking English (whatever that was), but perfectly good Outlandish. "Outlandish," corrected the hatter in a weak voice.

"I say, you've got some bloody nerve to be saying that to us, lad," began the first man angrily.

"Ah, will you let it alone," said his companion. "Out in the sun as long as he has, he doesn't hardly know _wot_ he's saying."

"Yes, I do," protested Tarrant, "and it's Outlandish."

The two men exchanged a significant look over Tarrant's head and did not say another word to him for the rest of the short journey. Which was fine with Tarrant, who did not want to struggle with any more words just at the moment anyway. The hatter, happy enough to simply be out of the water, lowered his head onto his arms and closed his eyes.

At a shout, which did not come from either of his companions, Tarrant looked up again. The dinghy was quickly approaching a much, much larger boat - a proper sailing ship, by the look of it - masts and square-rigged sails and quarter-decks and forecastle decks and proper, solid, wooden decks - a decent substitute for actual ground, and very, very welcome just at the moment. The ship's name was emblazoned on the stern in bold, red lettering - _Wyckham_. As the small dinghy drew alongside, two lines clattered down the hull, which Morris immediately secured to rings mounted at the bow and stern. A moment later, a rope ladder uncurled from the deck. Morris immediately jumped onto it and began climbing up Anxious not to be left in the dinghy with the larceny-minded man with the broken nose, Tarrant grabbed onto the ladder himself, taking a few dizzying steps up the rungs.

"Aye, come up if yer able," called a voice from above. Tarrant did so, keeping a tight grip on the rope rungs, one by one, until his head cleared the top of the rail and he was able to throw himself onto the ship's deck in a wet heap. As the hatter drug himself to his feet, Tarrant noticed that a number of men had drifted his direction, all staring at him with various looks of fascination, or disgust. The hatter noticed this in a vague way, but he was too busy himself staring at the men to pay it very much attention. Tarrant had to assume that these were aboveground people, just as Alice was, but they did not look very much like her. None of them had long hair, or were wearing dresses, and a great many of them cultivated a variety of facial hair. Not like Alice at all, thought Tarrant, though he could not be sure how many of these differences could be ascribed to these abovegrounders all being men.

"We might as well start with your name," said a bored, patrician-sounding voice from Tarrant's left. The voice's owner was a stout man dressed in a tan linen suit, whose eyes were observing Tarrant with an interest that belied the offhand manner of his speech. At the question, Tarrant abruptly remembered his manners.

"Tarrant Hightopp, at your service, and may I say I am exceedingly obliged -"

"Yes, I can assume as much," interrupted the man in linen with a dry sort of amusement. "Perhaps you might clarify a few pertinent matters for me, Mr. Hightopp. Am I to assume you are a criminal, a stowaway, or simply a very unlucky honest man?"

The man's tone was still as disinterested as if he had been discussing the weather. For some reason, that worried Tarrant a great deal. Trying to match the man's casual tone, the hatter replied cautiously, "Given that limited range of choices, I would have to say, an honest man."

"What ship are you from?"

"Ship?" Tarrant asked.

"Yes, ship." Tarrant did not say anything for a moment, trying to judge whether it would be wise to tell this aboveground gentleman the truth about how he got here. "We shall of course be making inquiries when we reach Rangoon. It would be in your best interests to be as forthcoming as possible." The man's eyes flicked briefly around the small group of men. "If you haven't work enough already, it would be an easy matter to find you other tasks," he announced. Very quickly, the deck began to feel much less crowded, apart from Morris and his broken-nosed companion, who were still at work behind him, stowing the dinghy. The man in the linen suit was still watching Tarrant.

"I don't remember a ship," said Tarrant dubiously. Mindful of what the White Rabbit had told him of the appalling lack of magic in the aboveground world, Tarrant decided that vagueness might be of more benefit than honesty. "I remember the water, but I don't quite know how I got there." A bland explanation, which also had the benefit of being entirely true.

"Lord Cahill, how thrilling," sang out a bright voice, the best, brightest, most welcome voice Tarrant had ever heard. "It sounds as though we have rescued the survivor of a shipwreck! Or perhaps a traveler kidnapped by pirates!" The owner of the voice fairly skipped across the deck and in a moment was at Lord Cahill's shoulder, twittering at the older man like a skylark. Tarrant's heart could have been twittering right along with it; but he could not catch her eye. She pushed her hair back from her face, a slow, elegant gesture along the crown of her head, and the hatter knew. She hadn't forgotten. Alice was here, and she hadn't forgotten. And she was still speaking . "You do hear such tales, you know, in this part of the world. Our castaway must have some terribly exciting stories," she said, and she was looking at him, one eyebrow raised, a smile hiding primly in the corners of her mouth. Her hair was yellower; her dress was still blue.

"I have a great many stories I might tell you," the hatter said, fighting to talk past a lump in his throat, "But I know very little about pirates."

"A pity," said Lord Cahill. "Miss Kingsleigh has always been a great admirer of fanciful tales. Miss," and here the lord put a hand to Alice's shoulder and made an attempt to lower his voice, "May I remind you that any ship who felt it necessary to, shall we say - might have had some very -" Tarrant felt the conversation was heading in a dubious direction, but Alice had seen what the Lord Cahill was obliquely suggesting and had quickly cut him off.

"Murder," she said clearly, "may be the refuge of thieves, brigands and ruffians, but I trust an honorable vessel would never even consider such an action."

"And a dishonorable vessel?" offered Lord Cahill with a smirk.

"I wouldn't know," Alice replied tartly. "I trust I have never yet set foot on one."

"Funny, I could have sworn you'd taken a turn on one of those Chinese junks in Canton a time or two." This remark, or the baited tone in which it was uttered, seemed to spark some hotter tone in Alice's voice.

"Does he _look_ Chinese?" she asked.

"_Dis_eased, maybe..."

Alice crossed her arms and gave a sharp look at Lord Cahill. "He can't be a leper or he wouldn't have a nose," she said shortly. "He speaks perfectly good English, and he hardly looks like a cutthroat. You would think under the circumstances that you might be a little more charitable towards someone who needs help."

"Under the circumstances, Miss Kingsleigh" retorted Lord Cahill, "_You_ would do well to be a little more suspicious."

"We shan't get anywhere if we continue to be suspicious of everyone and everything. And he hardly looks like he's about to burn the _Wyckham_ down around our ears..." She let the words slide away as she crossed her arms and looked at Lord Cahill with a look too innocent and inquiring to be entirely truthful. The deck was quiet enough that Tarrant heard Lord Cahill's slow intake of breath.

"Far be it for the Company to be anything less than accommodating of a guest," the Lord Cahill announced magnanimously - though Tarrant had the distinct impression that he was only agreeing so that Alice would stop arguing with him. It was probably a wise decision; Tarrant had learned early on that arguing with Alice was not a productive use of one's time. "Morris," the Lord continued, "Get him into some dry clothes and find him a berth." And to Tarrant, "Mr. Hightopp, if you refrain from making a nuisance of yourself for the next ten days, I _might_ put in a good word for you with the Company in Rangoon." The capitalization in Lord Cahill's voice was obvious, as was the fact that this remark constituted a dismissal.

The sunburned man from the boat took Tarrant by the elbow and began leading him further along the deck. Fumbling along beside, the hatter heard Lord Cahill begin in a sterner voice "Miss Kingsleigh, a word, _if_ you please..."

That piqued tone of voice, in another situation, would have been followed sooner or later by _off with her head_. Tarrant tried to look back to see how Alice was faring with the linen-suited lord, but Morris was still pulling at his arm. Reluctantly, Tarrant allowed himself to be led through a narrow doorway and down into the interior of the ship.

* * *

She found him quickly enough, after he had stripped off his soaked clothing, and been bundled into shirt and trousers, their material coarse and the cut ill-fitting. The berth, as it was called, was a hammock in a crowded room two decks down, ill-lit and ill-smelling. The eyes of the shapes in the other hammocks seemed to be following him; Tarrant crept away as soon as he could. He walked hesitantly onto the deck and she was at his elbow in a heartbeat. Tarrant was grinning, a smile that spilled out of his mouth and across his entire face, until he noticed that she was not even looking at him properly, but looking over his shoulder with the strangest expression of unease.

"Alice."

"Hatter," she said. Just that. And added after a moment, "We had better go below," and led him across the deck to another part of the ship.

Tarrant followed Alice down a narrow corridor and around two turns before she pulled open a tiny door and motioned him inside. He stepped through, taking in the small bed, one porthole window, tiny desk and unlocked steamer trunk, before turning back to his companion. The grin was back tugging at his mouth, but Alice had already turned to the door, carefully securing both the bolt and lock.

The hatter heard the clasp catch with a tiny click, and without turning around, Alice said, "You've made them very uneasy, you know. Lord Cahill thinks you might be a spy or a saboteur, or even just a stowaway."

The grin slipped away from the hatter for a second time. She had not said hello. And saying, now, _it is so very good to see you again, _seemed a trifle impertinent.

"Very many words beginning with S," he said instead.

"Yes, and none of them are good ones," Alice said shortly. "_Please_ try to be careful."

"Saboteur is a very admirable word; it reminds me of geraniums. And why should I be careful of a man named after a cheese?"

It was not until Alice turned around that Tarrant realized she was laughing, shoulders shaking like someone had plucked her strings. There was his grin, thought Tarrant. Silly to think that he had lost it, when it was sitting quite plainly on Alice's face, molding the worried, stranger's frown into the most familiar, most delightful set of features he'd ever known.

"Hello, Alice."

"Hatter," she replied, and there was a glow in her voice like fireflies. It flickered out just as quickly as she stepped further into the tiny room. "I'm being terribly rude, please do sit down, I can fetch some tea if you'd like -"

Tarrant shook his head, settling himself, for lack of any better options, on the very outside edge of the small bed. "I've already swallowed enough water today that the fish shall be missing it," he said, feeling bold enough to venture a bit of nonsense. She _had_ laughed at the geraniums. "I expect them to send a letter of complaint."

"Then we shall pour the tea over the sides and hope the fish will be satisfied," Alice said, dropping into a cross-legged heap onto the lid of the steamer trunk. "Was it -" She bit her lip and stopped. "Were you in the water for terribly long?"

Tarrant shook his head. He didn't want to trust the words with his answer, they always got awfully mixed up whenever he tried to lie. And before she could ask him the question that he didn't wish to answer, the one beginning with _how did you get here_ and ending with _what on earth did you think you were doing_, he added, "I fell through a looking glass, in Mamoreal."

To his surprise, she nodded immediately. "I didn't know it worked in both directions. _I_ walked through a looking glass once, and ended up in the middle of a chess game. But it's quite vexing that the mirror spat you out in the middle of the ocean like this. Though, don't you think its strange that you ended up so close to wher_e I_ -"

"Where is the ship going?" asked the hatter, interrupting her with the first question that he could think of. Tarrant had not seen his Idea since he'd left Underland, but Alice was a clever girl. She might guess, without its help, that his fall through the looking glass was not the accident he had implied it to be.

"We're on our way back to Rangoon,"said Alice. "It shouldn't be more than another ten days before we get there."

"Is Rangoon where you are from?"

"No,that's England. Though mostly I've been living in Canton. Well, not _in_ Canton, but in the European settlement outside. We just," and here Alice bit her lip again, "had to leave, recently."

Tarrant looked closely at her, both sorry to see signs of some recent turmoil evident in her manner, and cautiously, shamefully hopeful that this might be a situation he could put to his own use. He was, after all, looking for a Moment.

"What was it that happened, recently?"

"The house where we were living was burnt down," she said, and her tone was a little too matter-of-fact for the hatter to entirely believe. "Along with a good portion of the whole European settlement."

Tarrant shut his eyes against the smoke smell that was unaccountably wafting through the room.

"Burned," he repeated in a half-strangled voice. "Is there a Jabberwock here, then? "

"Not even the slightest little speck of a Jabberwock," Alice hastened to reassure the hatter. "Just pitch and oil and wood."

"And where will you go - since they burned your house down and all? Are there any windmills nearby? There is a lovely one, back at Witzend,and there is certainly room for -"

"No windmills that I've seen," said Alice, addressing the oddest question first. "And I rather hope that we shall go back to Canton -when things quiet down, of course - or Hong Kong. And there's London, of course, but that would mean months and months on a boat. You would like Calcutta, it's the most impossible city I've ever seen and -" Alice noticed the hatter's stricken expression. "Tarrant, what is it?"

"You could -" the hatter stopped, not quite bold enough to ask this most important question. He rushed ahead anyway. "Its beautiful there, you know, in moonbeams with the lights bathing along the walls, and purple, talking stalks growing on the greenest, fattest flowers, and scones and scones of tea in jam and -"

Alice touched his arm and the hatter abruptly fell silent, swallowing and looking uneasily at his knees.

"Do you miss Underland so much already?" she asked in a light voice.

Not Underland, thought Tarrant, not Underland. But I do miss so many things - little girls that ride about on hats and answer riddles, and drink tea and slay monsters and how is it possible to miss someone who is standing right in front of you? Ah yes, thought Tarrant. I miss her already because I already know that she's going away again, and because I know it, its like it has already happened. Even when it hasn't.

There was no possible way he could explain all of this the way the words were currently behaving, but Alice had asked him a question and she was still waiting for an answer, eyes looking at him sadly even while she was smiling, so he simply said, _yes_.

"We'll get you home," Alice told him, with enough conviction in her voice that Tarrant knew it would turn out to be true - she was Alice and she would _make_ it true. "_Some_how..." Tarrant tried to look appropriately pleased at this notion, but tears seemed to be leaking out instead of a smile, and he dove into the pocket of his waistcoat for a handkerchief.

"I promise you, Hatter," Alice began, and Tarrant latched onto those encouraging words, only to feel bits of himself coming loose again as she continued. "Not everything here is as bad as sea water and sailing ships. There is so much here that's beautiful, Hatter. There were birds, coming down the coast of Africa, as colorful as anything you might find in Underland." The delighted grin was back on Alice's face; curiously, Tarrant found he did not like it half so well as before. "And the ocean - it will churn and churn for weeks,and then one day you wake up and it's as calm as a mirror, for as far as you can see. And the Chinese boats in the harbor at Canton, with their queer little sails, folded up like paper fans. Some of it is more beautiful than I could have ever imagined it." The grin flickered a little, like a candle in an unexpected wind. "But some of it is, well, it's _different_, is all."

"Different," repeated Tarrant, hoping that she might continue. There was the tiniest hint of dissatisfaction lurking just behind Alice's eyes; he wondered what might be the best way to coax it out into the open. Apparently, it did not need much coaxing at all; Alice wrinkled up her nose and began speaking fiercely to the lid of the steamer trunk.

"Back in London I had always heard that the dispute after the Kowloon incident was about the trade deficit - the Chinese would only take payment in silver, and nothing else. And there was all that tea, and the wretched plants don't _grow_ anywhere else, and the Empire is very keen to keep it that way and so it was silver or nothing. And there is only so much... But we _aren't_ paying in silver now, and I don't think we have been for a very long time..." Alice trailed off, a dark look settling across her face. Tarrant had understood perhaps one word in seven.

"At any rate," said Alice, shaking off her momentary mood, "This ship load isn't going anywhere except right back to India. Only, Hatter?"

"Alice."  
"Be very careful until we get off the ship," she said again. "The officers are polite enough, but some..." She stopped and bit her lip again - a nervous habit of hers that Tarrant had never seen her perform quite so frequently. "Try to stay away from the sailors, if you can. And," she added tentatively, "the cargo hold."

* * *

Tarrant had left the little cabin shortly after that, wishing for several reasons to get out of the tiny, pitch-smelling cabin and up to the clearer air on deck. The hatter found to his dismay that neither his legs nor his insides had entirely adjusted to his new situation aboard the ship, although he did have to admit that being aboard a ship, however tipsy she was behaving, was far better than remaining in the water. True to his promise, he stayed clear of the few other people he saw on deck, not entirely sure whether Alice's injunction applied to all of the other people on the ship (for were they not all to be considered sailors?) or simply a select few. Regardless, there were rather few people on deck at all now that the sun had set, and the few present seemed rather intent on staying clear of him as well.

Very soon, the only light to be had came from a half-dozen glass-housed lamps hung about the deck, swaying back and forth., as everything in the world now seemed wont to do. Tarrant felt in a general way that he ought to sleep- not having done so since leaving the windmill - but it seemed much more important try and get a clear grasp on his, and Alice's, present situation.

Perhaps, he thought, he should have simply told Alice what he was about, and asked her to come back to Underland then and there. But she was talking a great deal about the aboveground world and all she had done - it had been nearly two years for her, Tarrant had discovered - and the timing had never seemed right. Alice had told him a great many things about a place called China - but it wasn't the place Alice was from, and it wasn't where the ship was going, or where the ship was at the moment. The main importance of this place called China seemed to be that the country produced a substantial quantity of tea, (an admirable trait in a country, Tarrant had thought) whereas other aboveground countries produced hardly any tea at all. The specifics of how the tea from China was to be paid for had led to a Dispute. The Dispute had lead to Alice's house (but, no, she had corrected him, her house was somewhere else, it was just where she was living, but where she was living was apparently not her home) being burnt. Along with a large portion of the city of Canton, except it was not the actual city of Canton that had burnt, but only the European (another place where the ship wasn't going) camp outside the actual city's walls.

Tarrant had suggested that if her place-where-she-was-living had burnt down, mightn't it have been easier to go inside the walls and stay in the actual city? Alice had explained to him, very carefully, that it was some of the people in the actual city who had been doing the burning. Tarrant had not stayed in Alice's cabin very long after that.

The White Rabbit had told him often enough that the aboveground world was very different (the rabbit would have said inferior) to Underland, different in almost every particular. Now having been resident himself in the aboveground world for nearly six hours, Tarrant had to disagree. It wasn't different, or even inferior. It was horrible. And the most horrible part was that Alice did not seem to notice that this was so. Her house had been burnt down (by her neighbors, no less!); she was already halfway around the world from her family and apparently had been for quite some time; she was involved up to her neck in some sort of business venture that even she seemed to consider somehow dubious. _Dishonorable vessels; we aren't paying in silver now; pitch and oil and wood..._ Any sensible Alice ought at the very least to be entertaining the notion of going back to Underland.

Not her. She had spoken of the ship journey with real enthusiasm, and had been full of incomprehensible plans involving silver exchanges, and currency, and trade deficits and a hundred other things that Tarrant could not make sense of. She had thrown herself back into her life here, seemingly without a thought for him or anyone she had left behind in Underland. As though she loved it. As though she did not love -

Tarrant batted those words away; they looked feral, and were probably given to biting. He culled a more domesticated word from the paddock - it happened to be 'sassafras' - and contemplated it while waiting for the feral words go elsewhere. The hatter rested his elbows on the ship's rail and sternly told himself that he had no excuses for feeling glum. He had made it to the aboveground world, had managed to avoid drowning; he had found Alice, and he had it on the authority of the White Queen herself that it was possible to convince Alice to return. That was as good a beginning as anyone had a right to expect. It was only that convincing Alice to return to Underland - or properly recognizing the Moment when she might be convinced - was not going to be as straightforward as he had thought.

Tarrant realized that he had not thought to ask Alice about the boy whose mother had wanted Alice to marry someone.

Tarrant shook his head to clear away that disagreeable notion and peered over the rail into the night sky. There was beauty in the sea, Alice had said. Tarrant stared into the dark for many minutes, but try as he might, he could not catch even a glimpse of it.

* * *

Tarrant was startled from his reverie by the arrival of three men emerging from the forward part of the ship, out onto the intermittent darkness of the deck. They were dressed, as he was, in linens that wanted mending. Although Tarrant had to believe that the men were wearing their own clothes (as Tarrant presently was not), the garments looked unconscionably ill-fitting. And, though it was difficult to tell in the light, rather dirty as well. Tarrant entertained a brief notion of offering to make some alterations, _gratis,_ of course, in light of them having saved his life and possibly being themselves friends of Alice, before he remembered Alice's injunction. And indeed, the sailors were looking very suspiciously in Tarrant's direction. Their faces glowed in the light of the lanterns. None of the men appeared to have very many teeth, but what few they had were fully engaged in the business of leering. Slightly cowed, Tarrant fixed his gaze firmly on the horizon. He supposed he was being rude, staring at them as he had done. He very carefully did not look at them as they opened a small door set into the quarterdeck and disappeared into some lower level of the ship.

Nearly a half-hour later, he again very carefully did not look at them as the same men came out of that door and back the way they had come. And wafting in the air behind them, the slightest hint of a smell. The hatter recognized it; several pertinent words began braying alarmingly. He knew that smell from Underland, little amber chunks of it, red flowers that would sing you to sleep, but oh Alice - didn't anyone warn you what they steal if you listen?

Carefully, Tarrant turned towards the quarterdeck and sniffed, but found nothing in the air that was not ordinarily supposed to be there. Nevertheless... Tarrant had already taken three steps towards the door before he remembered what Alice had told him.

_Try to stay away from the sailors. And the cargo hold. _

_ We aren't paying in silver now, and I don't think we have been for a very long time._

Tarrant knew what was in the cargo hold. More than that, he knew that Alice must know it as well. Alice knew; Alice did not tell him; Alice kept their secrets; did not object to their schemes. Underland's Champion had chosen this, where she had not chosen -

The anger was waiting for him, hands outstretched, dressed like fire. With difficulty, Tarrant held it back. Before he let it in, he wanted to be certain. It would only take a moment to be sure.

Tarrant crossed to the door below the quarterdeck and threw it back, dropping down a tight stairway, following the half-imagined smell of flowers. Down a corridor, his feet inexplicably clumsy along the wooden deck. _No wonder they burned her house._ Another stairway, another,lower deck. Tarrant could feel the heat of the anger behind him, its hands were already tangled in his hair and the colors matched exactly. Another door, and this one had a padlock that had been run through the handle but not actually locked. Tarrant pulled it from its ring and dropped it carelessly to the floor. He opened the door and the flower smell greeted him with a crocodile smile.

It was thick in the air, too thick to have come from the crates, numerous as they were, and Tarrant had a sudden notion of what the three men must have been doing here. Yes. One box had already been pried open. There they lay, bits of tangling opium amber, sugar cubes of oblivion, candy drops of madness. Tarrant stepped further into the room, covering his nose against the sharp scent. There were a horribly large number of crates, and the room seemed to stretch on a long ways - covering the entire back of the ship, perhaps?

Tentatively, Tarrant put a hand to one of the crates, feeling the rough grain of the wood snatch and catch at his fingers. So this was it, he thought dully. This was what silver and China and tea and trade routes all added up to. This was Alice's choice, her happy ending, and the words were biting viciously enough that he leapt onto the crate to try and get away from them. It didn't help. This was Alice's choice. _This_ was Alice's choice. Addiction and madness and false, lying dreams.

The anger was still there - oh God, the anger was still there - but it was less effective than it should have been at keeping out everything else. There was a story, wasn't there, about a boy who had traded his cow for five beans and they grew a beanstalk all the way to the sky. But the beans you trade in now are poison, Alice, and you knew it all along. You've tasted real magic and you know this isn't it. This is madness, Alice. Believe me, I know.

That was the crux of the matter, the hot little core. Alice preferred dealing in _this_ madness than dealing with _his -_

Tarrant dug his hands into the frame of the crate. There would be splinters again, some vague part of him observed. He didn't hear the door open, or the footsteps. Only when the lantern they carried threw shadows across the room did he notice, startling about like a broken-winged bird.

The three men from before were standing just inside the room, the middle one now holding an oil lantern. The light glimmered in their eyes, their sweat-covered faces, and their teeth. Leering again. At him, he noticed uncomfortably. Without a word, the taller of the three reached behind him and slowly pulled the door shut. Tarrant heard it close with a snap, locking out everything but the lantern-made shadows and those leers.

_Stay away from the sailors_, Alice had told him. Tarrant was sorry to say that that didn't seem very possible just now.

* * *

_Credit where credit is due - the first bit of poetry Tarrant is trying to remember when he is in the water is a villanelle by Dylan Thomas. The other is a quotation from Hamlet, which we'll be getting back to a little later on..._

_History - the first opium war, what Alice refers to as the Kowloon incident, took place from 1840. Opinion in Britain's Parlaiment was split on whether the conflict could be considered justifiable. A treaty was patched together in 1842, opening Canton and four other Chinese port cities for trade. _

_On October 8,1856, the Arrow, a Chinese-crewed vessel flying a British flag, was boarded by the Chinese harbor patrol, an action which the British interpreted as hostile. British warships were stationed in the Canton harbor by the end of the month. On December 16, 1856, Chinese forces set fire to the European settlement outside the town. Many erstwhile residents, including the British Consul, fled to Hong Kong._

_

* * *

  
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_Puffin's note - Love it? Hate it? Have a comment, criticism, idea or suggestion? You know what to do... **Still** working on the last chapter, as well as chapter three...  
_


	3. Chapter 3

_Puffin's Note - Goodness, I just realized this chapter is just as long as the last one. How do I keep doing this? _

_I do apologize if any of you were confused about the title change - I am generally of the opinion that it is the height of rudeness to change a title in the middle of the story, as it often becomes difficult to track the story down later. I am also of the opinion that it is better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission. _

_Back when I wrote the first bit of this (which is probably going to be appear here as chapter six), I had tentatively called it Locked Rooms. Then I wrote some more, and decided on Liminal Spaces. But halfway through this chapter, it became rather obvious that the first title I had thought of was actually the correct one. Plus, it sounds more like the title of a story and less like the title of a psychology paper. (Disagree? Let me know. Y'all know how.) So, with apologies to y'all (and to the Laurie R. King novel of the same name), I present the new, improved and renamed... Locked Rooms..._

_~Winter Puffin_

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* * *

_

**Chapter 3**

Alice did not wake until the second or third scream. She glanced automatically to the door, checking as always to make sure the locks were still fastened, even as she was struggling out of the thin sheet. It was dripping with sweat, she noticed, more than might reasonably be blamed on the weather. Alice thought she might have been dreaming, but if so, her abrupt awakening had thoroughly cleared away any lingering bits, leaving Alice with only a coppery taste in her mouth and the strangest feeling of unease. Funny, thought Alice. It was not as if she had never been awoken like this before. One would think one would grow used to it. Eventually.

Another faint cry drifted in from the deck above, followed after a moment by a snapping crack, and a low, trailing laugh. The wind had picked up - it was crying, screaming almost, around the edges of the cabin's tiny porthole. Unfortunately, it still wasn't loud enough to drown out the other noises. Footsteps and flails; cats with nine tails and no grins at all. She'd seen it, from time to time on _Wonder_. It should be no surprise that this sort of thing happened occasionally on _Wyckham as_ well. The _Wyckham_ had no cannons, only fake gun ports painted along the sides, so whoever the fellow was, they would probably have tied him to one of the masts. Probably the mizzenmast - it sounded close. Alice winced again at a further noise. I do hope they finish it quickly, she thought.

These things took some getting used to, even back on the _Wonder_. And Alice did not quite trust Lord Cahill and his captain as thoroughly as she trusted Lord Ascott. Hopefully, her father's old friend was safe enough in Hong Kong - the Consul had promised to take a message to him personally. Ascott must be worried; but there hadn't been time to wait for a boat heading east. The only other boat owned by the Company was the _Wyckham_, heading reluctantly back to Rangoon after trying and failing to make a delivery in Canton. All in all, Alice was lucky to be on it at all, though in truth she hardly felt that way. Especially now - sitting in her bed like a frightened school girl,waiting for the monsters to stop making their terrible noise so that she could go back to sleep. Not easy to feel lucky. Not easy at all.

Except that her boarding the _Wyckham_ had meant that Tarrant Hightopp, Underland's own Mad Hatter, had unaccountably crossed her path once again. At least, she thought he had. Sitting in bed, listening to the wind crying through the rigging, it was quite possible to believe that she had imagined the entire fantastical afternoon. She hoped she hadn't. Alice doubted he would have asked quite so many questions if he was a dream. She certainly hoped he was real. And given what was currently happening on deck, she also hoped he was sleeping. Soundly.

And if he _wasn't_ sleeping, Alice was uncomfortably aware of the possibility that he might be about to, as Lord Cahill had put it, make a nuisance of himself. Ship discipline, however harshly it might be dealt out, was an unpleasant fact of life at sea. But she didn't think Tarrant was likely to see it that way. Neither had she, once upon a time.

Mad he very well might be, but Tarrant had always had an unusually tenacious grasp on right and wrong - at least as he tended to perceive them. Slaying is right; murder is wrong. He hadn't killed the Knave of Hearts. He very easily could have and no one would have said a word to him about it. He'd wanted to, but he hadn't, because he didn't need to. There was a simplicity in that; a curious sort of strength. Alice had always remembered the hatter as being strong.

And where _was_ he, she wondered, fiddling with the edge of the sweat-damp sheet. It was not the first time she had wondered this since he had left her cabin at dusk. There had been a half-expectation, when he had left, that he would be back to her little room sooner or later. She knew he still had questions, she could see them flitting about behind his eyes from time to time - but he had spoken surprisingly little. Alice knew that the hatter was not always in possession of a coherent means of expressing himself, so she had chattered away instead. But he did ask questions, and the questions he asked had led to a few things Alice did not particularly want to dwell on. Pitch and oil and wood...

They were still carrying on at the mizzenmast; it was enough to make Alice want to stuff her pillow over her ears...

If Tarrant hadn't come back already, he was probably asleep. But there had been another half-expectation, even fainter than the first, that Tarrant would not want to sleep in the crew's berth. The notion had gotten no further than that - an odd thought of an extra blanket and that the lid of the steamer trunk was not likely to make a very comfortable bed. But there was a definite hint of disappointment, no; call it unease, that he hadn't come back. Especially considering what was currently taking place on deck.

Alice had already slipped from her bed before she had entirely made up her mind that she was going out. If Tarrant was aware of what was happening - and God, there probably wasn't a deck on the ship where you couldn't hear it - and was upset (likely) or angry (likelier), Alice hoped that he might go to her, first. It was proper, wasn't it, it was the old pattern - they were there for each other at the beginnings and ends of things, with a smile and a question and an outstretched hand. Was that still how their particular pattern went? Alice wasn't entirely sure. It had been too long, and Tarrant had always been one for rushing into dubious situations, if he thought it was the right thing to do.

He was probably asleep. He probably wasn't on deck at all. He ought to be sleeping. But it would only take a moment to check. Before she went back to sleep herself, she wanted to be sure.

The dress from the day before was the quickest thing to throw on, and she did so, only bothering with the barest essentials of what one might normally wear beneath it. Her dark traveling cloak, generally unnecessary in this climate, would hide what the darkness didn't. She slipped her feet into her boots and quickly did up the laces. Then to the door, undoing first the lock, then the bolt. Alice slipped outside, carefully closing the door behind her. The dreadful sounds from the deck were quieter here in the corridor, as was the wind, and Alice began to feel the slightest bit silly that she was dragging herself out of bed in the middle of the night on the vaguest of suppositions. I've done sillier things for less reason, Alice told herself wryly. Just a quick look. Down a corridor and up the stairs.

As it turned out, Alice didn't even make it that far.

* * *

Lord Cahill was already coming down the stairs as Alice approached; his face twisted into a troubled sort of expression as he saw her.

"Miss Kingsleigh," he said, not unkindly. "I see the hubbub has woken you as well."

"Yes," admitted Alice. "The noise... I don't know who could sleep through that, honestly..." She tried to step past the older man, but he put an arm out, gently touching the outer edge of her cloak.

"The deck is hardly a pretty sight just at the moment, Alice. Leave it to the captain to see to this."

That was the problem, Alice often thought, in dealing with businessmen. Just because they thought women should not have to deal with certain situations, did not stop certain situations from having to be dealt with. She had already opened her mouth in protest, when Lord Cahill cut her off.

"You might sleep easier, Miss Kingsleigh, if you did not seek out such things as are likely to disturb your dreams."

Alice stopped then, and looked at him. She knew that the cabin walls on the _Wyckham_ were thin, as the walls in the little house in Canton had been thin, and she had known Lord Cahill a long time.

"My dreams seem capable of disturbing a great many people, sometimes." Alice had tried to speak lightly, but the words sounded high and strained to her ears. "I have been trying all year to teach them better manners."

Lord Cahill removed his hand from her arm, for a moment looked as though he were going to touch her face, but the gesture stopped just short. Out of nowhere, Alice remembered a letter he had once shown her, written by a granddaughter back in Norfolk, the laborious printing of a young girl just now mastering the delicate art of letters and words and thoughts on a page. She was determined to do it herself, he had said; she was such a curious little thing.

"Miss Kingsleigh, if _you_ are determined to teach them better manners, I've no doubt that eventually you will succeed in doing so," he said gruffly.

"That is very good of you to say," said Alice softly, not sure how else to respond to this most unusual overture of sympathy. Alice was fierce in her opinions and well she knew it. Although Lord Cahill was one of the Company men who listened, the two of them did not always agree.

"Things should be quieting down presently," he said, ushering her back down the corridor towards her small door. "You might as well try and get some sleep."

Only once, Alice looked back at the stairs to the upper deck, but she couldn't help asking, "Is it - what did -"

"Three of the sailors," Lord Cahill said shortly.

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing else," Lord Cahill confirmed. "Something to do with the cargo hold - and I cannot say I find the punishment excessive," he finished, with an uncharacteristic heat to his voice. Before Alice could question him further, he added gruffly, "Now, Miss Kingsleigh, be so good as to retire to your cabin, so that an old man might retire to his."

Alice pushed her door open and stepped through, pulling a curtsy to the linen-suited lord as she turned around. "Good night, then," she said, and Lord Cahill nodded as she pulled the door shut. True to their pattern, he didn't leave immediately. The bolt was drawn, the door lock following with its tiny click. Only then did she hear him begin to walk away, his boot heels clattering smartly against the wooden deck.

Once upon a time, she would have thought it patronizing. But a lot of disagreeable things had happened to Alice since once upon a time.

* * *

Once upon a time, Alice had felt extraordinarily lucky.

Shortly after what Alice still remembered as her engagement party, she had taken what would have been her dowry and purchased back a significant portion of her father's stock in the company he had founded. The certificate was sitting in the family's bank in London, made out to one A. Kingsleigh. Hamish had done an admirable job of helping 'Alvin' Kingsleigh, Alice's supposed and entirely fictitious cousin and guardian, sign the proper paperwork. Alice had thought it a grand lark; even Hamish had been amused at the ease with which they were able to bring 'Alvin' to life.

Her mother had not quite forgiven her for that - for adding an extra twig to the family tree, perhaps, but never for using Alice's dowry to buy it. Especially after Alice had told her mother that if she ever did decide to marry, she hardly thought it necessary to _pay_ the man in question for the dubious privileges of sharing his bed, raising his children and managing his household. Not in so many words of course, but Madam Kingsleigh did understand something of her youngest and strangest daughter; she picked up on the subtext very clearly.

Four months into her apprenticeship, she had learned enough about how the company operated to form some sort of opinion of the best way to manage it. She had ideas, and the stock ownership meant that the other owners had to at least appear to listen to them. Shortly after her twentieth birthday, she found herself on board the _Wonder_, embarking on a months-long journey to the Orient - not as an apprentice, but as a junior partner. She had left just before the London season. Alice didn't think her mother had quite forgiven her for that, either.

The journey south had been magic. Dolphins following the wake of the ship, phosphorescence in the waters off of Africa, ports of call in Lisbon and Cape Town. Then two days after leaving Calcutta, Alice had found out what it was that was now filling _Wonder'_s cargo hold. She had argued back and forth about it with Lord Ascott for the better part of a fortnight. But that first journey, it was either sell the damned cargo - or start looking for some other way to work passage back to London, as the company would hardly be able to pay to bring the _Wonder_ back without _some_ sort of financial return. Alice had thought that selling the first shipment would be difficult, and that turned out to be true. Putting her signature to the bill of sale, taking the silver, that was difficult in the same way that ignoring a beggar on the streets of London was difficult. Heart-wrenching, the first time. Easier, after that. More routine - if still dubious and in this case, technically, slightly, possibly, illegal.

Despite the shadow that had clung to Alice those first few weeks of dealing in opium amber and silver and silks and porcelains, she had been radiantly happy in Canton. The harbor, and the spices in the markets, and the funny little birds that buzzed like starlings and perched on her windowsill every morning. There were bits of Underland to it, Alice thought at times, tiny wells of foreign magic that seemed to pull at her with their own sort of gravity. She wanted to see every bit of it. She wandered the streets and the harbor disdainful of chaperones and heedless of decorum. One night she lingered at the harbor later than she ought, unwisely watching the moon set over the South China Sea.

A certain thing had happened that night that Alice still did not like to think about, and now she was much more careful. Cautious of the hours of daylight remaining, mindful of chaperones. Careful of properly demure hats, and bonnets, and stockings. She took comfort in her door locks, and was not given to objecting if certain of the sailors were flogged. Not all of them, only the ones that sparked a memory - a certain word, or gesture, or look in their eye. The look that said that everything Alice was or would ever be, could be burned out of her skin in a matter of a few horrible minutes.

Alice had taken some comfort in the fact that she had never been very keen on getting married anyway. Though there had been a miserable few days afterwards when an impetuous marriage had seemed a very compelling option. That particular complication had never materialized; for which Alice was tremendously grateful. At least she had managed to keep any whisper of the whole matter from her mother.

She had unwisely watched the moon set in Canton harbor one night and a few nights later, the nightmares had started. Well, the nightmare, singular, which was really a memory. There was ever only one, but it returned like clockwork every night for the first month. It had been Lord Ascott who had suggested trying the opium. The drugs and the distance of time did their work, and Alice did not often now have occasion to think on the nightmare, nor the circumstances that birthed it. There was too much to do - shipping schedules, and exports and taxes, and mail from London always being three months too late. Too much to think about - harbor fees, and business plans and silks and porcelain and all the tea in China being hers. For the right price, naturally. And most recently, how she was going to continue to do all of these things with her business partners scattered and her warehouses burnt to the ground. The moon in Canton had been nearly a year past; she had not had occasion to use the amber in some three months. Alice had seen visions of impossible things with her waking eyes; she had little taste for the fantasies that the drug tried to press on her.

Though once Alice had partaken of her treacherous cargo herself, it seemed so much easier to allow the machinery of her trade to continue to turn the amber into silver. Just like spinning straw into gold. Exactly like that. Sitting and spinning and watching everything you thought you wanted pile up in front of you. Just ignore the little man in the corner, shouting out his name and pleading that you remember your own. He's not important and he never has been. Just spin. Don't object.

She had objected, once upon a time. Once upon a time, Alice had objected to a great many things.

* * *

The second time, it was a knocking that woke her, and as before, she didn't hear it immediately. It was a soft tapping, like drops of water falling into a well, and in her dream, Alice was falling with them, tumbling down into darkness until the moment she woke, startling, in her small bed. Well, not hers - she was still too new to the _Wyckham_ to think of her cabin that way. Her own bed was still in Canton, which was a shame, since it probably didn't exist anymore.

The tapping came again, tentative and soft, a fragment of the dream that had ended up in the waking world and was not entirely sure of its welcome there. Silently, Alice slipped from her bed, her feet nearly silent on the wooden boards of the little room. She could still hear the wind, howling its wordless complaints to the stars and the sails and the rigging. The bolt was still safely guarding her; Alice was suddenly possessed of the notion that she did not want this fact to change. That if she only held still, and did not make a sound, that the bit of her dream would vanish, like the other half-heard sounds that spoke to her in those odd moments between sleep and waking.

Alice was only half right. The tap did not come again, but a hoarse whisper, as if he had somehow sensed she had woken; was listening.

"Alice. Please open the door."

She slipped across the wooden floor, out of habit grabbing the dark cloak from atop the steamer trunk and throwing it over her nightdress. She paused for a moment with her hand to the bolt, then shook her head fiercely, as if shaking away the last bits of dream, clinging like cobwebs. Even in the dark, her hands knew the mechanism well. A click of the lock, a low sigh of the hinges, and the shadow figure stepped over the threshold. It was dizzying for a moment, as if he had walked out of her dreams. A nonsensical idea in daylight. In the dark, she could almost believe it for truth.

He slipped past her without a word, stumbling into the far corner of the little room, standing in the space between the bed and the little table, back to the wall, arms hugging his shoulders, head held low on his breast. For some reason, Alice was reminded of the pharaohs in the British Museum. They had stood like that, hadn't they, arms crossed and head bowed, dead eyes contemplating the vagaries of their eternity.

"Hatter?" she asked into the silence.

Alice couldn't see his face, but she wanted to, just to remind herself that his eyes were green and his skin white, not the linen-yellow that her mind was insisting on sketching there. There was a little oil lamp on the desk and she went to it, feeding through a bit of the wick, removing the glass housing and striking the match. Simple tasks, even in the dark; her fingers should know the motions better than this. Eventually, the flame leapt in the lamp. Alice dropped the glass back into place and turned round.

At some point he'd changed into his old clothes, and looked even more like a memory for it. He was holding onto himself as though in pain, or as though the effort was all that was keeping the various bits of him together - red hair, blue shirt, patched trousers, looping cravat, bare feet. There was no yellow or linen in him, in his body or clothes or manner - but his eyes. They could have belonged to a pharaoh, to someone who had seen his legacies, kingdoms and lovers whittled into sand, and only the crying wind remembers their names. They were terrible eyes, and he still hadn't spoken a word.

"Hatter," she began again.

"Tarrant." He cur her off and the words were almost a growl. "_Alice_. Tarrant."

"All right," Alice agreed cautiously. "Tarrant." His eyes flicked once towards her and she ventured to put a hand to his arm. He bolted away the moment her fingers touched the fabric, tearing past her to the corner between the bed and the steamer trunk, turning about in the small space like a cornered animal.

"Lock," he choked out, as though the effort had cost him something. He took a deep breath, as though there were more we wanted to say, but stopped, his mouth half-open, panting, eyes flickering anxiously between Alice and the door.

"Tarrant, what's happened?" Alice asked him

"L-" he started, then stopped with another impatient shake of his head. Carefully, he unfolded one arm and made a motion; a key fitted into a lock; a key being turned.

"Tarrant," she tried for a third time, but the hatter was making little hurrying motions now, and and not only that, but his arm was shaking. Alice threw the bolts.

"Put out the..." Tarrant spoke from behind her a voice not much louder than a whisper. "Out..." He had drawn back his arm, hugging himself and looking at Alice , or through her, with that same dead stare.

"Tarrant, did they hurt you?" she asked urgently, and he couldn't have been the fellow at the mizzenmast or he wouldn't be _walking_, for God's sake, but something was very, very wrong.

"Put out the... " he murmured. It wasn't much of an answer. In fact, it seemed that he was asking a question, but he didn't seem to be asking it of Alice.

Mindful of how he'd started away before, Alice walked a step closer and held up her hand. "I'd like to look at your back, please. Tarrant? Would that be all right?"

"Right?" he said, as though trying out the word. "Put out the... right?"

Taking that for as much permission as she was likely to get, Alice took another step closer and very slowly, reached around his shoulder. He stood stock still, not turning or doing anything that might make his back any easier to see, but he was watching her with half-slitted eyes. The hatter's head turned to follow her hand, as if he were keeping very close track of her progress. Alice had the uneasy feeling that she was inching towards some invisible barrier of his - of body or space or privacy. Given the manner of his mood tonight, she did not want to find out what he might do if she unwittingly crossed it.

She toucher her palm between his shoulder blades, just long enough to feel whole, smooth, unbroken skin beneath his shirt, to see that he did not flinch from the contact. She pulled away immediately; something that might have been a grimace tugged at Tarrant's mouth.

"Not me," he said shortly, and there was a brutal sort of amusement in his voice. "On deck. But I watched."

He didn't sound sorry in the slightest.

Alice did not immediately reply to that, as she tried to fit those clipped words into her own conception of 'hatter'.

"Put out the..." He was rolling something about in his fingers, about the size of a marble. "Put out the sight..." Tarrant tossed it into the air, watching it arc and catching it on the back of his hand, like a boy playing at jacks. Again through the air shone a spark of amber and Alice's breath caught in her throat.

"Where did you get that?" Alice demanded.

"Put out the light and then put out the light!" Tarrant's eyes were glittering, so was the bit of amber. "Shouldn't you know where your own things are kept? Best be careful, Alice, people will think you mad."

"I told you to stay out of the cargo hold!"

"Yes, you did," the hatter spat back. "You know what this is?"

It was barely a question, but Alice answered as if it was, with as much pride in her voice as her anger was able to give her. "Yes, I do."

"You know what it does?"

"Yes, Tarrant, I know what it does."

"Do you?" hissed Tarrant. "We've matches right here, Alice. We could try. We could both be mad together." He held the bit of amber between his fingers, admiring it as if it were a diamond. His words were as bitter as if it were glass. "Only for a few hours, you know. And then a few hours more. You'd like it at first. It wouldn't be long before you loved it. Couldn't live without it. And there is such a great amount on this ship, I dare say we would be happy for a very long while."

Alice tried to snatch it from him, but he slipped it away, holding it above his head, and she would be damned if she were going to jump after it, as if at a boy who'd stolen her hat.

"Don't be ridiculous, Tarrant," Alice snapped, trying not to let on that she was just the tiniest bit frightened of the mood riding him. Being frightened never got anyone anywhere. Neither did being ashamed. "Its just the cargo. We just sell it. People want to buy it and we sell it to them; is that so difficult to understand?"

"Wickedness is very straightforward, Alice," Tarrant replied immediately. "I think that may be its only good point."

Alice laughed, and it was not a pretty sound. "If wickedness is straightforward, then so is business, Tarrant. Congratulations - it takes most people much longer to figure that out."

"Who is 'most people'?" Tarrant demanded. "Lord Cahill? Your family? Alice, who knows about this?"

The anger in his voice was becoming muddled with confusion and his hand was just low enough. Alice snatched at the amber, held it between her fingers with a smile just as wicked as Tarrant might have imagined.

"Everybody knows, Tarrant," Alice said shortly. "The warehouses in India, the investors in London, the British Consul - everybody knows perfectly well what we're about! We buy the damned stuff in Calcutta, sell it on the black market in China, then turn around and take the money paid us and buy their exports - silk and porcelain and tea. Then back the boat goes to London - galleries and auction houses. Absolutely everybody wants a piece of it, Tarrant. Lords, Queens, businessmen. Something to sit on their mantle and look impressive while they dream of the Opulent East and quote Coleridge - '_In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn_.' They want to pay for Shangri-La, why not sell it to them? And the Chinese - they keep buying the opium, don't they? Everybody keeps buying their fantasies. Then we turn around and pay them with the same silver and they keep taking that, too. They know where it comes from and they keep taking it anyway. Absolutely everybody.

"Now are you sure _you_ wouldn't want to try a piece?" It was an empty threat and Alice knew it, but he had frightened her and troubled her, and she could not let his accusations stand. Tarrant, however, had turned an even chalkier shade of white; some hungry part of Alice was pleased to see him so discomfited.

"I am not everybody and neither are you," said the hatter in a shakier voice. "You are Underland's Champion, or you were. What is this, Alice? Tea and trade routes and China and _this_? Don't tell me everybody. Tell me _you_. Who in heaven are you now?"

"Alice Kingsleigh," Alice said immediately, and there was no hiding the pride in her voice. "_I_ decide what that means, Tarrant. _I_ make the choices and it doesn't much matter if you approve of them or not."

"Well, I don't approve! This is the bad sort of dreaming, Alice, you must know that." But Alice had the oddest sort of smile on her face.

"Tarrant, do you have any idea how many people have told me they don't approve of me? I've stopped keeping track. It's my _business_, Tarrant, not my whole life . I'm sorry if you don't like it, but it's the middle of the night, for God's sake, and I do wish you would let it alone!"

Tarrant gestured to the bit of amber still in Alice's palm. "This is your choice then," he said, and there was the tiniest quaver in his words. "Are you happy with it?"

"Perfectly," Alice said.

"I don't believe you," Tarrant said, almost desperately. "You look over your shoulder; you lock your doors. You warn me of sailors and cargo and dishonorable vessels and fires in Canton, but you never _say_. You never tell me. I may not understand everything, Alice, but I understand this. Tell me and make it a proper answer - I've walked through worlds for you Alice, I deserve that much. _Tell_ me. Are you happy?"

"Fine," said Alice, and if Tarrant was going to barge into her room at god-knows-what hour of the night for the express purpose of haranguing her, she was not interested in being particularly kind. "Here is your full, complete and honest answer. I am _perfectly_ happy. You've no idea, Tarrant, how much I've been able to do. I run a company; people _listen_ to me; things that people in London told me I would never be able to manage, but I do. I do them every day. I'm living my life how I wanted to, Tarrant. How many people can say that and really believe it?"

"And what is the cost for these things you do, Alice?" the hatter asked in a low voice. "Have you thought about that?"

The truth was, Alice had thought about it a great deal.

The cost is looking over your shoulder. The cost is locking your doors. Waking at night with a throat hoarse from screaming you know not what. Watching Navy brigantines arrive in Canton harbor with rows of gun ports like red mouths; seeing the faces of friends turn overnight to the faces of foreigners and enemies. Fleeing your home just ahead of the fire. Finding yourself on a strange ship in the middle of the night, shouting at an old friend.

A high cost; had she ever thought it would be anything less?

"It is nothing I haven't been willing to pay," said Alice firmly.

"Need it be so high, though?" asked Tarrant, and his voice was coaxing, almost pleading. "People listen to you in other places; you could run things. You are an equal of Queens, Alice, anywhere you go. Need it be..."

Tarrant straightened up with an effort and took Alice's hands in his own. Alice allowed them to be taken, but let nothing into her face or manner that indicated this gesture was in any way welcome. She was still holding that damned bit of amber; she could feel it digging into her palm between his clammy, sweat-slickened hands.

"Come back to Underland," Tarrant's voice was low and steady as rain. "I love you. I'm frightened for you. Come back."

The worst part was, Alice could have guessed. Another half-expectation, like the damned blanket draped over the steamer trunk. She glanced at it before she could stop herself; as though it was burning her from across the tiny room. He troubles me; he walks through walls like they don't even exist. Ferrets out the shame, the secrets, these strange half-acknowledged hopes.

He had called her wicked. Had mocked what she had shed her body's blood to build, as if he had the right to scorn it. He asked her to go away with him. He told her he loved her. Exactly as if he had the right.

That particular combination seethed in Alice; turning vicious in a heartbeat.

"You called me wicked, now you're calling me _lover_," She dropped her hands from his, slid her fingers under the hem of his shirt and across his stomach. "Is that what you want? Is _this_ what you want?" His skin was still clammy even there, and shivering under her palm.

"Alice, _please_ -"

"Because I'll tell you something, Tarrant," Alice continued fiercely, because he wasn't stopping her, just clinging to his own shoulders as if that were all keeping him afloat. "I don't want _any_ of it. Not one bit. But you don't seem very bothered about what I want. Do you know what they call men like that?"

Alice withdrew her hands and stepped back, folding her arms into the sleeves of her cloak. The bit of amber was still nestled in her palm, a hot little ember. Tarrant was shuddering visibly now, hands over his face to cover the obvious fact of his sobs.

"No, oh no, please no, Alice, didn't mean, no, don't -" The words were coming out far too fast, and Alice knew where she had heard that sort of pleading before. The men tied to the mast, in the moments when they would promise their tormentor absolutely anything .

That there were elements to Tarrant more fragile than they should be, Alice had known almost from the first. That one of those elements might shatter by her doing, she had never before considered.

"Tarrant," she asked him, frightened now and sick with the feeling of it. "Hatter?"

"Don't, Alice," he said, but there was more of himself in the words. He rubbed at his eyes, one hand held protectively across his stomach where Alice had touched him. He swallowed heavily, his breaths more even than they had been a moment before. "I think -" Tarrant choked on the words, shook his head impatiently and tried again. Even without words, his eyes were pleading with her.

"There is such cruelty here - on this ship - _Wyckham_. And we've brought it in here with us. We let it in. Can you see it, Alice? The colors are wrong; nothing is its proper self. I think," he said softly, "that it would be best if we turned it out, or locked it away."

Alice crossed to the bed, kneeling on it to reach for the porthole catch. The tiny pane of glass slid on its metal frame; the wind tumbled into the room and tangled with her hair. She threw the bit of glittering amber out of the window with as much force as she could muster and the wind took it away. She closed the window without pausing to listen for a splash and turned, still kneeling on the bed. "I've turned it out, Tarrant," she said, for he wasn't looking at her. "All of it. It can starve in the cold for all I care. I shan't let it back in."

"We must be most careful not to," the hatter replied.

'Then we shall be," Alice replied. The two sat in silence for a moment, Tarrant running his hands through his hair as though trying to rearrange his absent hat.

"Alice," he asked after a moment. "Will you put out the light?"

Alice did so, a bare step away from the bed to the small desk, a quick flick of her fingers and the light flickered, then died. Alice turned, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, the faint glimmer of starlight and ocean's glow that trickled through the porthole she had lately closed. Tarrant moved, a sketched shape of a pale face, dropping gingerly onto the trunk with a small, pained noise which he couldn't completely stifle.

Her work, perhaps? And what was it Lord Cahill had said? _Cargo hold - and I cannot say I find the punishment excessive_.

"Tarrant?" Alice began as gently as she could. There was the question she wanted to ask, and then there was the question she was brave enough to ask. Alice thought the answers might be one and the same. "Why did you watch on deck, when the men were flogged?"

"I didn't know it was possible to hate your own skin," Tarrant told her in a toneless voice. "I wanted to see those men hate theirs. I thought -" he broke off, choking on what might have been a sob.

"It doesn't help, though, does it?" Alice said slowly. "Sometimes, it's just more hate."

Tarrant nodded, a shadow gesture, head pressed against his knees.

"They had a knife." He barely choked out the last word. "Took turns..." A long pause, silent but for Tarrant's rough breaths; his face twisted in thought. "I'm sorry, Alice, I don't know the word."

The few words the hatter had said were enough to spark dark embers of ideas in Alice's head. Cruelty, and hating your own skin, and too many nightmares. There had been a time she had wanted the door locked as well.

Alice held out her hand to him, palm up, not touching him, waiting for him to decide whether he wished to take it or not. Take it he did, head cocked to look at her, his fingers running across her knuckles like he was trying to learn their shape. That's something, thought Alice, though exactly what that something might be she did not know, nor wish to think about. Better to think that he might be happy, even when you know he's not.

"Are you going to be all right?" she asked him, knowing how ridiculously ineffective that sounded. But she needed to ask, even if she knew, possibly better than he did, what the answer might turn out to be.

"I expect so, yes," he said, and she could feel a tiny glow in his voice, a ghost of a smile.

If it weren't for the glow, she would not have been so daring. Alice leaned forward on the tiny bed, bringing their clasped hands close to her face. She could feel her breath playing over her own fingers a moment before she kissed his hand, lightly brushing against his knuckles.

He let go her hand, and just as lightly, his fingers touched her cheek. Alice had to believe that in the darkness he was smiling. In some odd corner, Alice found an answering smile; she knew he could feel it on her face.

"Stay here tonight?" Alice didn't realize it was a question until the words left her mouth. It seemed like precisely the right and precisely the wrong thing to say.

The fingers dropped away; Tarrant's voice came tremulously through the dark. "No, Alice. I came to ask you a question and I've asked it. But I can't stay, do you understand? Not ten days; not ten minutes." He moved to the door, resting his hand on the bolt. "I don't understand you, Alice. I thought I did, but I suppose I don't have to." He turned back to the door, words muffled as he turned the knob. "Guard your doors, Alice. _Alice_..."

Tarrant slipped out like a shadow, before he had even finished speaking, and the door whispered itself closed. The room seemed hooded, the lamp darkened and growing cold, empty but for a girl in a nightshirt, staring as if woken from a dream.

Dreams and nightmares, thought Alice. I never knew it would grow so hard to tell them apart.

Shaking her head, she stood and tentatively crossed the few steps to the door. Alice felt as if she were waiting for something - she didn't quite know what it was, but hoped she would recognize when it arrived. But although all the locks were undone now, there was no whisper this time from the door. Only the fierce complaint of the wind and the lowing of the ship's timbers in reply. Alice put her hand to the locks.

Tarrant hadn't said goodbye. Or had he? He would have told her, if her were contemplating something as idiotic as - He would have said something. Wouldn't he? It struck Alice that perhaps he had meant to. Her hand froze with the bolt only halfway drawn.

There was a moment, it seemed to Alice, that she could go absolutely anywhere. All roads were hers, all possible choices stacked up like cards, just waiting for the slightest breeze that would send them scattering in any direction at all. Some of them were old choices, battered and scuffed around the edges from where Alice had constantly dragged them out to examine and pick them over. Some choices appeared pale and ill-fed - those were the ones that Alice had locked away and refused to think about very much. There were a few choices that once visited her dreams. And a few that had played starring roles in her nightmares. And one choice, nearly brand new. Alice had seen it two, no three, times before; she had not thought to ever see it again.

* * *

Tarrant hadn't gone far in a handful of minutes; just to the top of the stairs, lingering in the doorway set into the quarterdeck. Alice had again shrugged into her dress from earlier in the day; she wore her cloak, and carried a small bag that jingled brightly of silver. Her leather boots padded up the stairs; over the wind she could hear him singing to himself in a low voice.

"I called my love false love, and what called she me? And all of green willow my garland shall be..."

She came to his shoulder; his voice trailed off as he turned, looking at her. Catching the light were tear tracks, a map of bright lines dappling his cheeks.

"You said you wouldn't wait ten minutes," said Alice. "Would you consider waiting for five?"

"Five minutes," Tarrant said thickly, "is a perfectly acceptable compromise."

Their hands found each other, though Alice could not quite say who had begun the gesture that both seemed eager to complete. His palm was still cool; his fingers still tracing lines across her palm.

"The dinghy," said Tarrant out of nowhere, "Would be a much better option than swimming."

"Yes, it would," replied Alice, biting at her lip and thinking. "Tarrant, are you sure -"

"Yes," said Tarrant in a voice brooked no discussion.

"All right, then."

It occurred to neither of them to wonder at the speed with which they were contemplating such a mad venture. This was, after all, part of their pattern, the intricate stitch-work which comprised those things Alice-and-hatter.

Their immediate problem was rather obvious. Although the height of the quarterdeck itself meant that the helmsman could not see the dinghy directly (at least, not if he kept to his post at the wheel), the two crewmen at watch on deck couldn't fail to see them if they made any attempt at lowering the small boat. Alice bit her lip.

"Wait here," she said suddenly. "I'll only be a moment."

Tarrant nodded, and let loose her hand, but continued to watch her most carefully as she crossed the deck, nodded to one of the watching men, and slipped below. Presently, she was back again, bursting out of the little door without the least intention of subtlety.

"Taylor," she called as she crossed the deck, "Someone has let the hogs into the galley and they're -"

The man she was addressing cursed - loudly and inventively - and both men on deck were running towards the far door before she had even finished speaking. Alice watched as the door slapped shut behind them, then scampered back to Tarrant. The grin was full on her lips, even in the dim light; she also seemed to be carrying several large somethings beneath her dark traveling cloak.

"Are they not going to be back in a hurry," asked the hatter, "when they discover there aren't any hogs?"

"No they won't," said Alice confidently. "And there _are_ hogs in the galley. I always did wonder if the cook was feeding the poor things properly..." Alice was leading him to the dinghy, looking sharply at the two pulllies, still tied to the iron rings on the fore and aft ends of the little boat. She set down two bags onto the deck, and pulled out a small wrapped package from the pocket of one of the cloak.

"We'll need to put this on the metal bits," she whispered. "The wind will only cover so much of the noise." She handed a shiny, slick bit of something to the hatter. Lard, by the smell. Tarrant wrinkled up his nose, but began carefully applying it to the metal wheels of the nearest pulley.

"I am glad you are here, Alice," he said quietly. Then in a lower voice, as though confessing a secret. "The Idea doesn't know how to untie these knots, and I'm not very good around knives, you know."

Alice grinned back at him. "There's more of this stuff on the hogs, too," she said in the same serious tone. "I wonder if they shall lick it all off before Taylor catches them all..."

With a last, scrutinizing look at the pulley, Alice picked up the two large bags and carefully dropped them over the side of the dinghy. She pulled at her skirts, in preparation for following the bags, but was stopped by a slightly sticky hand on her shoulder.

"Alice," Tarrant said dubiously. "This one is a Bad Idea, isn't it?"

"Well, I don't think anyone could call it a good idea, if that's what you mean. But we're close enough to the Strait of Malacca, that I wouldn't call it a _hopeless_ idea."

"Of course not," said Tarrant, sounding slightly affronted. "I would not have listened to it at all if I thought it was _that_ sort of Bad Idea."

"Tarrant, are you sure you want to do this?"

"Yes," the hatter said immediately. "I can't stay here, Alice. But..." He closed his eyes for a moment, his face twisting with the thoughts living behind it. "But are you sure you want to come with me?"

"No," said Alice, bluntly enough that she regretted it a moment later. "I am not sure of anything at all just at the moment - but I am coming anyway. Give me a leg up, will you?"

"Naturally," replied the hatter.

"Though how I am going to explain this to Lord Cahill, I have absolutely no idea."

* * *

A very few minutes later, the small dinghy dropped over the side, embraced by the water with the tiniest of splashes. The ropes connecting the little boat to _Wyckham_ were untied and dropped away, the loose ends curling down from the quarterdeck like snakes. Sitting on the bench seat, two figures quietly watched as the _Wyckham_ sailed on into the dark, her lights disappearing one by one by one.

* * *

_Puffin's Note - I adore storytelling by implication. I am also a firm believer in that what you can imply a reader into believing is better than what you say straight out.  
_

_I got some lovely feedback that several reviewers have enjoyed the historical, and real-world elements. I've tried to keep that around in this chapter. Thanks to Oolong, darkbangle, Kat Morning and moonlitjune. Though be warned that most of Kansas is going to go bye-bye in a chapter or two._

_Kudos also and especially to bruwench - I have tried to keep your comments on the hatter's characterization in mind._

_Credit where credit is due. 'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan' is the opening line of the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem 'Kubla Khan, or a Vision in a Dream'. The poem is believed to be recalling an opium-induced hallucination experienced by the author. _

_The song Tarrant is singing towards the end is a slightly modified quote from Othello. The lines are referenced in the play as being part of a madman's song. Another well-known Othello reference is visible if you squint - the first person to correctly identify it (and send me a message or review) gets a complimentary word pony._

_Cheers for now, and thanks for reading._

_~Winter Puffin  
_


	4. Chapter 4

** Chapter Four**

_~Puffin's Note. Many cheers to darkbangle for catching the Othello reference - Put out the light and then put out the light - from the play's hair-raising bedroom scene. Your complimentary word is octopus._

_Also cheers to Chemistry and Kat Morning for their reviews. Thanks for being along for the ride.  
_

_One lighter chapter. One. You've been warned._

_

* * *

_

As Alice had known that rowing themselves to Thailand was not a very practical prospect, she had devised a contingency plan before they had ever left _Wyckham_. As the last lights of that ship faded into the starlight, she roused herself and began unfastening the brass catch that held the oars in place in their oarlocks.

"Tarrant," Alice called to her companion. "There ought to be a sheet of sailcloth in one of those bags. And some twine."

The hatter turned and began going through the two bags, as Alice carefully pulled one of the oars free. Slowly, for it would not do to drop it, she slid it forwards across the bench seats towards the bow, carefully crawling over the seats herself to follow it. Resting blade down on the bottom of the hull, the handle of the oar stretched perhaps five feet over the gunwale. Enough to be getting on with, Alice supposed.

The hatter handed Alice the roll of twine, then dropped the folded sheet of sailcloth into the well near Alice's feet.

"Good," said Alice, determined to pretend, at least for the time begin, that she was more expert in notions of jury-rigging sails than was actually the case. There were plenty of hooks to tie on to, and Alice was inclined to believe that almost anything she was likely to rig up would be faster than rowing. "Now hold the oar here while I try tying it down..."

Feeling their way by touch and by starlight, the pair set to work.

* * *

The end result was neither as shabby nor as ineffective as Alice had feared. The sailcloth formed a sort of triangular shape, secured to the oar at the top with twine, with two corners sweeping back along the hull to be tied off at the oarlocks. It was getting the bottom of the oar, their surrogate mast, to stay put that was the tricky bit. Though she had tied the mast itself to the foremost bench seat, the bottom of the oar kept skittering back along the hull. This in turn caused the whole motley mast arrangement to careen unexpectedly towards one side of the hull or the other.

Eventually, Tarrant had elected simply to lie down in front of the thing. Alice thought it mustn't be comfortable, with the oar digging into one's back, but it did keep the thing from moving from its appointed place.

The mast was as sturdy as could be hoped; the sails were intermittently taut with the steadily blowing wind, they seemed to be moving perhaps a little faster than could be accounted for by the current.

Tarrant had been suitably, and sleepily, impressed; he had fallen asleep within five minutes, the trailing edges of sailcloth wrapped around him like a blanket. Carefully, Alice had crept back over the middle bench seat to mind the tiller. The wind was out of the west - usual for this time of year, she understood - but very welcome at the moment. _Wyckham_ had passed out of the Malacca Strait two days prior; Singapore two days before that. Somewhere to the east was the coast of Thailand - the wind's destination, now hers as well. It was the only destination Alice had any reasonable hope of finding, dependent as they were on the vagaries of tide and wind. The tiller kept the little boat moving in a straight line, helped her find the smoothest course over the low rollers that the wind brought to their path. But the tiller hardly guided their course. With no compass and a makeshift sail that couldn't tack, Alice would have to have been a much more skillful sailor to truly bring the boat into harness, or know how to direct it even if it did consent to follow her hand.

Alice jerked awake with a start, her head having slipped nearly to her shoulder before she realized it. She ought to sleep, Alice realized - but not so soon. They were out at sea in a dinghy; anything might happen. It would do to be watchful. Although honestly, Alice wasn't really expecting anything to happen for a number of hours yet. She did not know precisely how far they were from the coast in miles (or in knots, funny little measurement for almost exactly the same thing) but it seemed overly optimistic to think that they should arrive there before daybreak.

Tarrant was dreaming, Alice noticed at one point, fingers pattering and twitching against the wooden hull. Of what sort of dream it might be, there was no other outward sign. Perhaps a nightmare, perhaps not.

Alice knew that the dream, or the whatever-it-was, would be more likely to skulk away quietly if simply allowed to run its course, and hopefully he wouldn't remember it when he awoke. Alice had enough experience at this herself to know that waking him up in the middle of it would not be doing anyone a favor, least of all him. Of course, Alice also had the notion that the hatter would not particularly appreciate her watching him, as he dreamed. It seemed rude, somehow, a callous and disinterested breach of his privacy. Well, if he didn't wake, he wouldn't know, and she watched him most carefully until she was sure the dream had passed.

Eventually satisfied, Alice returned her gaze to the water ahead of them, and it was then that she realized that she and Tarrant were no longer alone in the boat.

* * *

A white bird was sitting on the edge of the gunwale, cleaning its already immaculate feathers with a dainty, peach-colored beak. It was no larger than a pigeon, but had a sleeker shape, ghostly pale apart from its beak and feet, and a black cap of feathers covering the top of its head. There was a faint blush of pink in the feathers along its chest, and a thin dark line along the trailing edge of its wing, as though the tips of the feathers had been dipped in ink. Its wings were rather thin and pointed, and seemed entirely inadequate to the task of keeping even such a small bird aloft over the ocean for miles and miles at a time. It seemed impossible to Alice that such a tiny, perfectly-shaped creature could even exist, let alone be out here in the middle of the water all on its own.

Still only a foot away from her hand, the bird continued preening, running its beak along the edge of of its feathers one by one. After a minute spent on its wings, the creature contorted its head all the way under its belly, looking at Alice upside-down through its long, streamer-like tail feathers. Alice had to laugh at that, and the bird twisted back around with a start.

"What's so funny?" the bird asked in an aggrieved tone. "Is there a bit of fish stuck back there?"

"No," replied Alice. "It just... well, I didn't know birds could twist their heads around so far." She was also rather taken aback that the bird could talk at all, although it seemed less than polite to mention that, somehow.

"Oh, that," said the bird. "Yes, I'm very flexible - you should see me flying. I'm very pretty as well, am I not?" For some reason, this last remark seemed like an honest question, which Alice answered as best she could.

"You are a very beautiful bird," Alice assured him, but the bird cocked a head at her, and replied in a rather condescending tone.

"I am not a bird, I am a Roseate Tern," the bird said, pronouncing its name very distinctly. "You calling me a bird is about as accurate as me calling you an ape."

"I do apologize," said Alice, flustered that the first talking animal she'd spoken to in two years, and she'd managed to insult it within two minutes of making its acquaintance. "What I meant to say is, you are a very beautiful Rosy- Rose-"

"Roseate Tern," the bird said again. "Am I really?"

"Undoubtedly," said Alice. "Especially those pinkish bits along your chest." The bird seemed to be quite pleased at this. It closed its eyes to slits - the eyelids closed from below, Alice noticed- and fluffed up the aforementioned pinkish feathers without seeming to be aware that it had done so. The bird opened its eye, looked askance at the now-akimbo feathers, and immediately began slicking them back into place with its bill.

"Yes - all that's only grown in recently," the bird said between feathers. "They're really very stunning, aren't they? Do you like them?"

"I think they suit you," Alice replied. There was a sort of unconscious vanity to the little bird that Alice found entirely too charming to be objectionable.

"I molted only a month ago - that's when the pink bits showed up - so these feathers are still quite new. I don't _really_ have to preen them so much," the bird confessed, "But I am of the opinion that good grooming is a sign of good breeding, wouldn't you say?"

"I am sure you are right," said Alice. And then, because she could easily see the bird waxing eloquently about its plumage for the entirety of its stay on the gunwale, she asked, "Do you know how far we might presently be from land?"

"Land?" said the bird. "Why would you want to go there for, when you already have this lovely ocean? Well, there are lovelier oceans, I suppose. There is a very nice one just north of Adak, and another one -"

"This ocean is perfectly fine," interrupted Alice. "But we cannot stay out on it forever and we are trying to get back to land. Rather urgently, actually."

"Well, suit yourself," said the bird absently. "But I don't know very much about land at all, I'm afraid."

"What, don't you even go back to dry land, ever?" asked Alice. "What happens if you get tired of flying and you need to rest? There isn't always going to be a boat handy, is there?"

"I would rest on the water, of course," said the bird, and Alice had the feeling that the bird had come to the conclusion that Alice was the tiniest bit slow about a number of things bird-related. "I haven't bothered with land for ages now. I left land behind for good when I was forty-seven days old - or maybe it was forty-eight days old - and I haven't been back in three years." The bird continued in a wistful voice. "It was nice enough, I suppose... but..."

"But?"

"Well, there is so much to do out here. Fishing, and preening one's feathers, and following the summers back and forth - you'll miss one if you aren't careful - and charting all the courses of the wind. It's all quite important, you know."

"I'm sure it must be. But, we aren't in the middle of the ocean now, are we?" Alice asked the bird worriedly. "I'm sure we were closer to Singapore than that."

"Ye-es. We are," said the bird, "Rather close." He scratched at his wing with a claw-tipped foot - a gesture that seemed to Alice to be the tiniest bit embarrassed.

"How close?" asked Alice, beginning to grow exasperated. "This is important, you know!"

"Closer than I've been since I hatched," said the bird, sounding slightly exasperated himself. "And I don't know why I am considering such a preposterous thing - I have not been to land since I was very young, and I know it shall be quite different, me being an entirely grown-up bird now. And if I linger much longer, I shall become terribly behind on where the summers are. Except..." The bird's wings drooped for a moment, and he appeared to grow thoughtful.

"Except - well, I have never met another Roseate Tern, really, and I think that I should like to. Especially if the other tern is as beautiful as I am. In fact, if it were a nice enough tern, I should not object if the tern were even more beautiful than I am. Though I am not sure that's possible, so I shouldn't get my hopes up."

The bird fluffed up the pink feathers about his chest and sighed, its small head drooping forward.

"It can be hard, going back to a place you haven't seen in so long," Alice told the little creature. "But it sounds like you have a good reason to consider going back."

The bird perked up its head, giving Alice a quizzical look - just as Alice jerked upright with a gasp. Startled, and suddenly wide awake, Alice caught a glimpse of a white, bat-like shape leap from the gunwale and tear off across the water . It had completely vanished into the darkness almost before Alice had even registered that it was there.

Have I really nodded off at the tiller, Alice wondered blearily. The answer was probably yes. Probably. But Alice had had enough experience with talking animals that she was the tiniest bit skeptical of dismissing the conversation as a dream.

Tarrant made a murmuring, half-asleep noise, pushing himself up from the floor of the dinghy. Alice stood up quickly, putting out a hand to keep the makeshift sail from toppling over on top of him. Tarrant startled, giving a sharp look in Alice's direction before seeming to recognize her, and what she was trying to do. Sitting up slowly, he put a hand to the oar, steadying it against the foremost bench seat.

"Alice, who else is here in the boat?" he asked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

"Well, there is a wonderfully talented hatter named Tarrant," said Alice, a bit nervously. "And a very foolish girl named Alice."

"No one else?" the hatter asked.

"No one else," she confirmed.

"No, there was someone whispering just now," said Tarrant in a muddled voice. "I don't know how he got here, or what else he could possibly want -"

"Well, there is absolutely no one else here now," Alice said firmly. "Although - Tarrant, I could have sworn I had a conversation with a passing bird a moment ago."

"Ah,"said Tarrant, as though it made perfect sense. "Perhaps that was it." Unfortunately, Alice had the feeling that whoever or whatever had been whispering to Tarrant, it wasn't likely to be found anywhere outside the hatter's own head.

"Did you get any directions?" asked Tarrant. "From the bird," he clarified at Alice's blank look.

"He was rather vague on where exactly we are," said Alice automatically. Of course, she should have realized that to an Underland native, a conversation with a passing animal would not seem particularly strange. "But, Tarrant, birds aren't really supposed to talk here. Animals in general, really. You don't suppose we're in Underland _now_, do you?"

"I don't see how we could have gotten to Underland without either of us noticing," said the hatter thoughtfully. "And I'd think... well, I rather imagine I'd _know_, if I were home. Things feel terribly... different, here."

Alice had a feeling that 'different' had not been the hatter's first choice of word.

"There is another explanation," Tarrant continued.

"Is there," Alice said noncommittally. That I've gone round the bend, obviously.

"That it is past your turn to be holding up this oar," said Tarrant, half-smiling. "If you are going to be dreaming up conversations with birds, you'll find it much easier to be actually asleep while you do so."

Alice gave the hatter a slightly embarrassed grin - she knew she'd been nodding off at the tiller even before the Roseate Tern showed up; she could hardly argue with Tarrant's assessment of the situation.

Carefully, the pair exchanged positions by crawling gingerly over the middle bench seat. Alice, having seen the little craft manage much rougher seas than this, had to hope that the dinghy was actually more stable than it seemed to its passengers, but she didn't want to take any chances of ending up in the water.

Alice lay down in the hollow between the thwarts, her cloak providing a measure of padding between herself and the wood. The bottom of the boat was just as uncomfortable a bed as it had looked, but at the moment Alice hardly thought it mattered. Tarrant helped to prop the oar between the forward bench seat and the small of her back; Alice shut her eyes, trying to ignore the way the boat jostled back and forth with the hatter's movements. Eventually, he sat back down near the tiller and Alice consented to open her eyes.

"Any particular way I ought to be pointing us?" Tarrant asked, indicating the tiller.

"A straight line is good," replied Alice. "The wind is doing most of the work for us, though. The rudder really just helps it along." Alice did not feel it necessary to point out that at the moment, the wind had much more control over their course and eventual destination than they did. At least it was blowing them in the approximately right direction. And the southwest coast of Thailand was rather a large target to miss.

"Give me a nudge if we appear to be arriving anywhere. Or if the wind changes direction."

They'd need to drop the sail, should that happen. Alice knew that the island of Sumatra was somewhere to the south, but it would be too easy to miss the island entirely and be blown out into the middle of the Indian Ocean before they had realized what had happened. Not a situation Alice wanted to contemplate, let alone actually experience.

"I shall do that," said Tarrant. "Now go to sleep, Alice."

Laying her head across her arms, Alice did so.

* * *

Some hours later, the sun and waves conspired to jostle Alice back to the waking world. She was momentarily perplexed as to why her bunk, which she had always thought of as being moderately comfortable, had taken to feeling so unfathomably hard.

"Mind the oar," the hatter said suddenly, and Alice jumped, narrowly avoiding upsetting the makeshift mast as she did so.

"Thank you," Alice said, still a little flustered. "And good morning."

"Do you know," said Tarrant, "I rather think that it is."

They were both, Alice reflected, looking rather well for two castaways - especially given that neither of them had likely gotten more than three or four hours of sleep altogether. The wind was still blowing at a steady clip, the rising sun indicated that they were still headed in the approximately correct direction and the sail, marvelously, was still upright. Add to that the fact that the boat had not capsized, or sprung a leak, or been attacked by a giant squid, or a vengeful whale, or a band of pirates, or any of the other possible disasters which might possibly befall two people in an open boat in the Andaman Sea. It was not even raining.

Tarrant looked all right, Alice decided after a moment. He was sitting on the aft-most bench seat, one arm resting lightly on the tiller, shirtsleeves pushed up to his elbows, squinting against the sun. There were dark circles under his eyes, but also a grin on his face, warm eyes looking her over as intently as she did him. Certainly Tarrant looked better than one might expect, given the events of the previous day. He might, Alice mused, possibly turn into a decent sailor in spite of himself.

Supporting the oar behind her with one hand, Alice leaned forward and snagged one of the bags sitting in the well between the thwarts.

"There were more birds perhaps an hour ago," Tarrant was saying. "They looked like seagulls, I suppose, and there was a large white bird that seemed to be flying without ever flapping its wings. None of them seemed to be in a talkative mood, though."

"No, I don't suppose they would have been," said Alice, rummaging through the bag. "Are you hungry?"

Tarrant's eyes immediately lit up at that, as Alice pulled out a handful of hard biscuits, a small wheel of yellowish cheese, and two tiny, wrinkled yellow apples. She placed the food onto the middle bench seat, both of them sliding into the well spaces fore and aft. Conversation momentarily ceased as Alice and the hatter set about applying themselves to their breakfast.

It seemed to Alice that even the hard, almost tasteless ship's biscuits were more appetizing when consumed somewhere other than _Wyckham_'s small, dark galley.

"Might I inquire," Tarrant said at length, "where we are attempting to get to?"

"Thailand," said Alice, hastily swallowing her last bite of biscuit. "Here's Singapore," Alice said, indicating a crumb on the middle bench seat, "Its a large city on the coast of Thailand- this line here. And just below it is the Strait of Malacca; that's between Thailand and a very large island called Sumatra. _Wyckham_ was somewhere past the north end of the Strait. With the wind blowing out of the west as it is, sooner or later we shall fetch up somewhere on the coast, here. Perhaps a day, perhaps longer."

"And once we get ashore?" Tarrant asked, in a too-quiet voice.

"I promised you I'd help you get home and I shall," said Alice. She folded her arms and gave Tarrant a steady look. "And I think it would be an excellent start if you might tell me _exactly_ how you got here in the first place."

Being on the boat as they were, there was no graceful way for Tarrant to avoid the question. Which fact made the dinghy either a very good, or a very bad, location for this particular conversation.

Tarrant sighed, looking shiftily embarrassed. "I told you I came through a looking-glass. But I... had help managing it. The White Queen."

Alice nodded, inviting the hatter to continue.

"I knew I might not have a way back when I left Underland. The White Queen told me that I would be on your road once I came here. And that... not all of the roads are safe ones."

"No, they aren't," Alice agreed in a quieter voice. _And you've already seen your share and then some of the wretched ones._ "Did Mirana say anything else, about how you were to get back?"

"That you make your own path, Alice," said Tarrant with a lopsided sort of smile. "And she cannot tell where it leads."

That makes two of us, Alice thought ruefully. Except that Alice knew if her path ever crossed that of the White Queen, she would let Underland's monarch know exactly what she thought of the queen blindly sending the hatter into Alice's world. Dangerous, ill-advised, and lunatic were three of the politer adjectives that came to mind.

It had not escaped Alice's attention that Tarrant had made no mention of _why_ he had wanted to cross into her world in the first place. She certainly had her suspicions, but if Tarrant did not want to talk about it, she wasn't going to press the issue. It wasn't as if she couldn't guess, after all.

"We shall just have to look for a safe road, is all," said Alice. And then in quite a different tone, "Tarrant, I'm terribly, terribly sorry-"

"Stop it," the hatter said firmly, crossing his arms over the middle bench seat and giving Alice a stern look. "If you become even the slightest bit maudlin, I shall throw you into the water, and then you shan't be sympathetic at all."

"All right, then," said Alice, startled. She was almost sure it was nonsense. But with Tarrant it was devilishly hard to tell. She folded her hands in her lap and tried again.

"All right," Alice repeated. "You were entirely mad to come here and I am entirely mad for following. But if I had to share a rowboat in the Andaman Sea with a madman, I would pick you over any other madman in any other world."

"Better," said Tarrant, grinning. And followed it up with a question out of nowhere. "There was a boy whose father knew your father and whose mother wanted you to marry someone - after you left Underland the last time. Whatever happened with him?"

"Oh, Hamish?" said Alice. Wherever had Tarrant heard about _that_? "Well, I didn't want to marry Hamish, and I told him so. He wasn't particularly disappointed because I don't think he wanted to marry me, either. And," Alice continued in a conspiratorial tone, leaning over the bench seat towards him, "Hamish Ascott eventually turned out to be my long-lost cousin Alvin Kingsleigh, so a marriage would have been quite out of the question."

Tarrant leaned forward as well, nose to nose with Alice over the bench seat. "That sounds like a very interesting story."

"Well," Alice began, "After I came back from Underland and told Hamish that I didn't care to marry him, there was a dowry sitting in a bank vault for the longest time, and some stock certificates that I dearly wished to get my hands on..."

* * *

So Alice began her tale. They were both so involved in the telling that neither one of them noticed the change in the water along the eastern horizon for quite some time. Tarrant was the first to notice it, even to his eye, the problem it presented became apparent.

"Dear me," he said, gripping the tiller more firmly and casting a worried look towards Alice.

* * *

_~Puffin's Note - this is actually only half of what I thought I'd be including in this chapter. The rest will be posted as Chapter Five at a later date - hopefully soon, as a good portion of it is already written._


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

_~Puffin's Note. Thanks again to darkbangle for her continuing reviews. Also, I have another one-shot posted . Check my profile for The Second Saturday in May, another take on how a visit by Tarrant to the aboveground world might go._

_

* * *

_

Alice and Tarrant had found Thailand all right, and had spent a worried quarter of an hour watching it progressively approach. It appeared as a strip of green, mingling with the hazy blue of the eastern horizon. A thin black line of what appeared to be a wide, rocky beach was almost entirely obscured by a forbidding line of white, foaming breakers. Alice had quickly determined that dropping the sail might now be in their best interest; the whole arrangement was currently tucked under the middle bench seat, a tangle of sailcloth and oar and twine. Their speed had not appreciably slowed.

"The beach itself looks very decent," said Tarrant over the thunder of the breakers. "Reaching it in one piece is quite another matter."

"Yes," said Alice, tearing her eyes away from the white, seething water and making an effort to be sensible. "Well, here are our options. We could untie the oar and row against the current, and try to hold our position off the shore. It's possible that the current might die down, or the tide may start running the other direction. Or, we could try rowing parallel to the current and look for some safer spot to put ashore. Or," and she stumbled over the words, "Or it's here and now."

"Do we know how soon the tide might start going the other way?" Tarrant asked, shading his eyes as he watched the white waves ahead of them.

"I don't even know which way it's running now," admitted Alice. "It could get better, or it could get worse."

"And fighting the current to get to a different bit of beach?"

"We might get somewhere worthwhile. We might also exhaust ourselves for no good reason."

"At least the here and now option has the benefit of being relatively straightforward."

"Not always the best of qualities," Alice reminded the hatter.

"Well, we shan't find our way back to anywhere lounging about in a rowboat," Tarrant said, with a grin that appeared entirely too optimistic for their current circumstances.

"That's true enough," Alice replied. Truth be told, she would be happier to face the breakers head-on, rather than wait and try to second-guess the tides and winds, and Tarrant appeared to be of the same opinion. Better to roll the dice once and be done with it.

And try to forget what it might mean, if the numbers are not in your favor.

"Only, we ought to untie the oar," Alice added. "We might be needing it soon."

* * *

Alice would have preferred to save the twine, but the salt water had done its work well, and neither she nor Tarrant could loosen the cords even an inch. And they did not, as the roar of the breakers reminded her, have an infinite amount of time in which to tease the fibers into cooperating. Alice pulled out a small pocket knife from the canvas bag, and set to work on the twine. She tried not to notice how still Tarrant had grown behind her, as she sawed at the ropes with the dull blade. The instant the oar came free, Alice folded up the knife and shoved it back out of sight, leaving the triangular bundle of sailcloth lying in a messy heap in the forward well. She pulled the oar across to the middle bench seat, sensing more than seeing the hatter slowly relax as she worked to wrestle the oar back into its proper place in the oarlocks.

"Hatter, are you quite -"

"Terribly clever gadgets, aren't they?" the hatter interrupted. "Sails, I mean. Holding back the wind but still letting it move?"

"Yes, I suppose they are," replied Alice, and she did not further pursue the question she had begun to ask.

The corners of the sailcloth were still tied off to the oarlocks, but given Tarrant's tripwire reaction to the pocketknife, Alice was not about to pull it out again if she could possibly avoid it. As long as there was ample room in the oarlocks for the oars themselves, it shouldn't matter. Especially as they were not likely to be resident in the dinghy for very much longer in any case.

"You probably ought to take the oars," said Alice to the hatter as she latched the oarlocks closed.

Carefully, very carefully, the pair slid past each other over the bench seat. Alice knew that logically the boat ought to feel _more_ stable with the sail dropped, not less, but the butterfly feeling in her stomach did not agree. She slipped into the aft bench seat, gripping the tiller and watching the breakers, white cascades of foam rising up in the water in front of them. Tarrant was sitting just ahead of her, holding the oars, the lines of his shoulders showing the complete attention that he was giving the roiling water in front of them.

They looked, Alice thought, even larger than they did five minutes ago. And indicative of - what, Alice, do try to remember - a reef or something, below the water, and causing the waves to pile up against each other, one onto another, and another, and another...

Fifty feet. Was it just the one line of breakers, or were there more beyond? Alice could no longer see the beach at all - only foam and water, raging and roiling. Twenty feet. It was on the tip of her tongue to call to Tarrant - row, get us out of here before the sea tears us to pieces - and then the bow of the dinghy plowed into the breakers and there was no time for anything but hanging on.

The dinghy bucked, and Alice jerked backwards, keeping herself from being tossed out of the boat only by her grip on the tiller. Water poured over her back in a torrent; there was a cry in the air that might have been Tarrant or it might have been her. The tiller swung in her hand, bucking once, and Alice did not know if it was the wood that splintered, or if it was only the roaring of the water. The dinghy heeled to the left; Alice could feel the hull grating against rock and the tiller was swinging quite uselessly in her hand. A dark shadow behind her, and Alice had less than a second to realize that it was another wave, even larger than the first, and they were broadsides to it, on a splintering boat -

"Tarrant -"

One scream in warning and the boat flipped, more suddenly than Alice had thought possible. Sailcloth twisted around her ankles, and a moment of panic that the hull was now between Alice and air. Then another wave took her, and the hull was simply gone. In the water now, and only water in all directions, eyes squeezed shut, tumbling and scrabbling with the waves. No air, - how deep now, and which direction is daylight, it is all the same and _where_ -

Alice's head broke the surface and she gasped into the light, but the air seemed fuller of water than it ought to be. The breakers were still roaring in her ears, salt stinging at her eyes and only the smallest window of sky between the roiling waves on either side. The water took her again before she had a chance to shout his name.

She came up again thinking of the sailcloth. It had still be tied fast to the boat, great tangling folds of it, and Tarrant had been closer to it than she. He could be caught, bound to the boat and drowning with it, and she still couldn't _see_. A wave poured over her, but this time she managed to fight against it, bobbing back up in seconds. And turned, certain that she had heard something over the raging of the water, something high and desperate and frightened.

"_Tarrant!_" Alice shouted back to the water, listening hard for any reply.

* * *

By the time they met up, they were nearly to the beach anyway, a narrow strip of sand-strewn black rock perched between the water and a stunning profusion of tropical greenery.

"Are you all right?" Alice asked as he swam up to her.

"I'm here, aren't I?" was his hoarse reply - and then at Alice's look, a more subdued, "Yes, I think so. And you?"

"Present and accounted for," she said shakily. A moment later she was in water shallow enough to stand, feeling the rocky, uneven shoreline between beneath the fabric of her boots. Her knees seemed less willing to support her that they usually were, and Alice wondered briefly if she was about to faint. Not having ever fainted before, she wasn't sure - but it seemed a reasonable assumption to make. Fortunately, Tarrant chose that moment to place a steadying hand on her elbow. She leaned on him rather more than was strictly necessary as they made their way out of the water and onto the narrow, rocky strand.

"I believe," said Alice in a tremulous voice, "That is what is known as a stoved boat."

She took a few hesitant steps down the beach, hardly noticing as Tarrant's hand dropped away, futilely searching the water for any sign of the little boat, or anything of what it had contained. Nothing. Well - there was her, and the hatter, and the clothes on their backs, if she wanted to be precise. But dear God, it was going to be difficult getting back to Singapore now, with no food or water, or any means of acquiring either. No boat, now, and certainly no silver. And they were - where exactly? Somewhere on the coast - but how far?

Alice wanted to shout at the waves - I had planned for things! I knew what we might need and I brought it. I could have managed this - you have no right to take any of it away.

Things will be harder now, she thought, staring fiercely at the water as if her gaze alone might cow the waves into handing back what they had stolen. Were it not for the still shape, waiting tentatively behind her, she would have been speaking aloud. Things will be harder. We shall certainly suffer for it. We may die. He might. And if that happens it will be my fault - but it will be _because_ of you, and what you've stolen away.

The ocean only continued to murmur to itself, loud and brash and entirely unconcerned. Oceans, Alice knew, had eons of practice at stealing things away. Trinkets and treasures, lovers and lives. She knew it would not be bothered about the castaway flotsam of one insignificant girl. Only food and water and silver. Nothing very important, as oceans might measure things. Nothing very important at all.

Alice wondered suddenly whether there were any islands, fringing the Andaman Sea. She didn't remember any from the maps. But that wasn't the same thing as knowing categorically that islands in the Andaman Sea didn't exist. And if they _weren't_ on the mainland - well, that thought didn't much bear thinking about.

"Well," breathed Alice, turning away from the water Put away the question of what had happened to them. Right now, there was only the question of what was _going_ to happen to them. This whole mad venture might have been Tarrant's idea, but the hatter was right about one thing - this was Alice's road. She made the path, or at least, she thought she did. What she had not expected was the path being so slippery under her feet. She had thought she knew where they were going, and how they might reasonably expect to get there. All of that had been roughly, suddenly and instantly, called into question.

Castaways, as a general rule, had no roads and very few options.

She felt more than saw Tarrant slip quietly up to her shoulder.

"I should very much like to bathe," he said in a low voice, indicating the water they had just come from.

"You should like to - Tarrant!"

Alice grabbed at his sleeve and he turned back, the expectation already in his face that she would object. She would have to object. They had just wrecked a boat, had no notion of where they were, and were already, by the way, sopping wet. He had no business wandering off, or wasting time, or even considering the notion of something as ridiculous as a bath. Tarrant said nothing, but it was there in his face that he was waiting for Alice to protest.

She would never, Alice thought in exasperation, entirely understand him. Fortunately, whispered some quieter bit of herself, Tarrant understands himself perfectly well. When you came right down to it, perhaps that was all that was necessary.

"Go on, then," said Alice softly. "I'll wait."

He nodded once, a look of relief flickering across his features, and turned away.

Alice watched him go, picking his way barefoot over the rocky beach. Her knight, tilting at his windmills. A beautiful bit of a dream; it was terribly unfair that he should have to exist here in the waking world. He was far too innocent for it; he didn't quite belong.

Tarrant was out of sight within two minutes. Alice hoped he wouldn't wander far.

She sat, stretching her feet out in front of her and spreading out her dress as much as possible, the better to allow it to dry. She kept a wary eye on the shoreline, thinking that it was perhaps not quite impossible that some bit of flotsam or jetsam from the dinghy might make its way ashore as they had done. It would be too much to hope that any of the food had survived, but the water skins - mightn't they float, if they were partially emptied? Alice wasn't sure, but it didn't seem an entirely impossible hope. Merely an unlikely one.

Alice was watching the water so intently, that she almost missed seeing the little flash of white entirely. Just above the water, and goodness, it had moved quickly, but no - there were two of them. Tiny white birds with streamer-like tails, darting on pointed wings just above the surface of the water, flitting in the wind like motes of light. One of them was hovering, almost as though (impossible thought) it were looking straight at her...

"You must be," said Alice, half under her breath and choosing her words carefully. "The most beautiful pair of Roseate Terns in the entire world."

The second tern wheeled about, seeing that its companion was not following, and circled about the first tern as though encouraging it to hurry along.

The hovering bird puffed up the feathers about its breast, flicking its head once towards Alice. A moment later it was gone, chasing after the other bird, dancing across the sky until they were both quite out of sight.

"Well," said Alice after a moment. "They do always say that one good tern deserves another." She was laughing at that, curled against herself, head pressed to her knees. Though why such an inane remark should be funny enough to cause her to cry as well, Alice did not know.

* * *

Tarrant's skin was redder than it ought to be when he came out of the water, though whether from the sun or from the abnormally forceful scrubbing he had subjected it to, he wasn't entirely sure. The beach here, if you could call it that, was just as rocky as where they had originally come ashore; Tarrant minced quickly across the rock to the small pile where he had left his clothing. The hatter knew that he would dry off more rapidly in the sun, but he slipped into his clothes still sopping wet, and did so as quickly as he possibly could. Doing otherwise would demand more of a certain something from him, a something Tarrant found difficult to clearly define. Whatever it was called, at the moment he seemed to possess it only in small, rationed amounts. Confidence? Bravery? Tarrant wasn't sure. Perhaps the word was to be found at the far corner of his paddock - the one particular corner that did not seem safe for him to venture into, at present. The words there were in a frightful state, rolling their eyes and snorting, a thick lather of sweat covering them from head to hocks. It seemed to Tarrant that there were other _shapes_ weaving in among the words, prowling along that corner like shadows. Whatever they were, they were clearly upsetting to the words; Tarrant found himself hoping the shapes would quickly go elsewhere

Despite the lamentable state of his paddock, Tarrant's current situation seemed in a few key respects much improved over what it had been the previous day. Alice was here with him; that counted for a great deal. The possibilities for that future, the future of things Alice-and-hatter, seemed marvelous, nearly infinite in its variety. Company, and tea, and the smell of her hair, and the possibility of getting home to the windmill with her alongside.

Unfortunately, Tarrant had to admit that the possibilities for the immediate few days, while just as infinite, were not likely to be quite as pleasant, marooned as they were.

He hadn't told her about the question he had come here to ask - _come back with me_? It hardly seemed necessary, as he'd already asked the question, in her little cabin on the boat - and the answer he'd gotten from her was as strange and frightening as if it had been written on his skin in fire. In most respects, it had not been a very encouraging answer, but that was neither here nor there. He had asked the question; perhaps that was the important thing in itself. She was still with him, after all. She had left the ship for him, seemed committed to helping him. That certainly counted for something. And Somethings could be built on. Bit by bit, somethings could be built on.

When he had been with Alice in Underland, Tarrant had several times been puzzled by a troubling space in matters Alice-and-hatter, a blank spot in their canvas that he would be only too happy to fill, if he only had the slightest idea of how to paint it. It was only recently that Tarrant had come around to the notion that he himself had a certain degree of influence over what sorts of things might fill their canvas, and what might be discarded out of hand.

Gentleness; that was there. Respect, goes without saying. And passion? _So roll me in your arms, my love, and blow the candles out... _ One of these days, Tarrant supposed that he would. At some point. Alice willing, and all...

Tarrant already had a few notions of things he did _not_ wish to see creep into the balance of their quiet equilibrium. He was deadly serious about tossing Alice into the water if she seemed to become in any way maudlin towards him. Maudlin was far too much like pity. _That_ particular emotion had no place anywhere in the compass of things Alice-and-hatter; Tarrant would object most strenuously to it or anything like it being allowed in. Circumstances come and circumstances go, and otherwise decent people are occasionally barred from certain corners of their own heads, but Tarrant understood that these sorts of things would eventually fade. They had done so before. When the Jabberwock came. Or the day at Salazen Grum. Those had faded; so shall this, in a day or a week; a month or a year.

Tarrant hoped that the pattern he was building with Alice would last for considerably longer than any of those.

That was assuming, of course, that their pattern had any sort of future before it at all. Tarrant was not entirely ignorant of the desperate nature of their current circumstances - shipwrecked, no food or water, no clear idea of where they were or what direction might lead them any place more pleasant. And even if they did leave, it would only be to some other unfathomable corner of the aboveground world. Despite Alice's repeated assertions to the contrary, Tarrant hardly thought it possible that anything in the aboveground world could be other than brutal, horrible or cruel. That was certainly his experience of it; the only exception seemed to be Alice herself (which only served to confirm Tarrant's supposition that she did not properly belong in the aboveground world at all). It would be far better if they could get back to Underland directly.

Too bad he had no clear idea of how that might be accomplished.

Though there was that conversation Alice had told him of the previous evening. The conversation with a talking bird. Tarrant was inclined to stick with his previous assessment of the event - Alice had looked dead on her feet; Tarrant knew that in that sort of situation the boundary between a person's real and imaginary worlds became more porous than usual. There probably hadn't been a conversation. There probably hadn't even been a bird at all. (Then what were the whispers he had heard? But the answer to that involved words that weren't safe for Tarrant to approach. Not yet, at any rate.)

But - maybe there had been a bird. And just maybe, it had been a proper, talking, Underland sort of bird. That would be indicative of all sorts of encouraging prospects -starting with the fact that he was a world safely away from the people who had upset his paddock. It would also mean that he had nominally succeeded in his goal of getting Alice to return to Underland. Never mind that she hadn't agreed to stay - simply being back in Underland would be enough to be getting on with. He could worry about all other matters at some later date. After a day or two at the windmill, say, and a fortifying cup of tea.

In short, the idea that they may, in some unaccountable way, already be in Underland, was appealing enough that it seemed logical to look for a way to objectively test the notion.

Tarrant had seen no animals since arriving on the beach, and few birds he had seen, dashing back and forth in the surf, had bolted as soon as they saw him, calling in alarm at his approach. Tarrant supposed there were fishes in the water somewhere, but it was tricky talking to fishes - someone was always having to be holding their breath. And Tarrant emphatically did not want to get wet again if he could help it. The hatter looked more closely at the rocky beach around him.

There was the tide pool, Tarrant realized. He had noticed it as he first walked up - quite close to the edge of the water, only maybe a foot from where the surf was lapping at the rocks. The strange pool had struck him immediately, the way it pulled at him like a window into another world, like (something Alice had said) it had its own peculiar gravity. Like a window into another room. Perhaps some of the inhabitants would be up for a spot of conversation. Tarrant shuffled closer to the pool, lying on his stomach to better peer at the tiny community. It was almost like an upside down version of the castle at Mamoreal - instead of creatures living in a white tower rising up, these were creatures living along the sides of a darkish hole dropping into the depths. Tarrant wondered if any of the sea creatures, having an artistic bent, wrote paeans extolling the virtues of darkness, and grottos, and deep places.

Some of the animals looked like they might be the sort that would write poetry,sitting very still and contemplating the alien world of dry land as they waited for the tide to come back. Gelatinous, tentacled messes of anemones, pincushion sea urchins, brushy combs of tube worms rustling in the depths. If they were even animals at all - they seemed to be unusually motionless - not a very animal-like quality, usually. But Tarrant had heard somewhere that these sort of creatures _were_ proper animals, even if they didn't look it. If that were true, it seemed worthwhile to attempt to engage one in conversation.

"Erm, hello," began the hatter awkwardly. "I couldn't help but notice what a lovely sort of tide pool you have here. It's, erm, very colorful, and... wet. It could be quite inspiring from a poetical point of view. 'Oh, Oysters, come and walk with us, the Walrus did beseech? A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, along a briny...' Well, maybe not," Tarrant added hastily, remembering that this particular poem did not end very well for the oysters. "'It is an ancient mariner who stoppeth one of three?' No? I quite agree, terribly long poem about a terribly boring voyage, and he tells you right in the first stanza that you're going to regret hearing about it..." Tarrant was aware he was rambling, but he was also becoming increasingly frustrated with his inability to provoke a response from the tranquilly floating anemones and their various marine cohorts.

"Or, I suppose, living in a tide pool, you might prefer something a bit... brighter? 'Full fathom five my father lies?' Um... 'There is a tide in the affairs of men?' Not taking to Shakespeare? My mother would be shocked. Oh, here's one - 'From many a wondrous grot and secret cell, unnumbered and enormous polypi'..."

Terribly rude of them not to answer. Assuming that they could talk at all, which Tarrant was beginning to doubt. But he did not want to give up without knowing definitively that they couldn't. He looked at the tide pool carefully, trying to decide which among the various creatures before him would be least apt to bite, pinch, claw, or sting. Anemones, no; sea urchins were definitely out, just look at all those spines; crabs, perhaps a little too mobile. He eventually lit on a large, flabby-looking sea star crouched in a corner about six inches down.

"'There hath he lain for ages and will lie; his ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep' - do pardon me -" And poked it, very firmly.

"Ah, _scut_," Tarrant hissed, shaking his fingers and wincing. Heavens, but that had hurt. A bad pinch, it had felt like, and yes, it seemed to have broken the skin _Rotten_ luck, and inexcusably horrid of the creature. The flabby-looking sea star was obviously not as defenseless as it appeared. Or perhaps Tarrant had badly misjudged the location of its mouth.

"Scut," Tarrant added for emphasis, picking himself up from the ground and giving the tide pool a final aggrieved look. Rude, uncommunicative, and liable to lash out at hatters with shockingly little provocation - they must be aboveground animals for sure. So much for that idea.

Brushing himself off, Tarrant supposed he had better be returning to Alice. Not that they had any sort of timetable to be following, per se, but he did not want Alice out of his sight any oftener than necessary. The aboveground world was entirely too dangerous for that. Anything at all might happen.

He did not think it strictly necessary to mention anything to Alice about the tide pool. She would likely understand about him picking an argument with a tide pool creature. But subsequently admitting that he had lost said argument was another matter entirely.

Still shaking his fingers, Tarrant minced his way carefully over the rocky beach. He did not notice that behind him, the water in the tide pool flashed white, and then began to darken like glass, as though some strange alchemy had unexpectedly been completed.

* * *

Alice was on her feet the moment he came back into sight, sopping wet (ridiculous man) and flicking his fingers as though he'd gotten something on them that he didn't particularly like. It was not, Alice sternly told herself, that she had been worried about him, she was just quite tired of sitting about on a beach when they ought to be getting on with things. Such as determining where they were, and how they were going to be getting to anywhere a little more... populated.

She walked over to Tarrant directly, not even waiting for him to come to her. He looked very closely at her eyes, and Alice wondered if they looked as red as she feared. Terribly large amount of sand on beaches, always getting into her eyes and making them sting.

"Shall we?" asked Alice before Tarrant could say anything that could lead to her having to explain how she hadn't been crying. "We may as well keep to the beach, it looks easier than slogging our way through the greenery."

"Also a nicer view," noted Tarrant. And unexpectedly offered Alice an arm, as though they were embarking on a leisurely stroll through the grounds at Mamoreal. "The Walrus and the Carpenter were walking hand in hand," he declaimed. "They wept like anything to see such quantities of sand..."

Tarrant had not gotten through more than two or three verses of his strange Underland ode, when he stopped abruptly, and began dragging Alice closer to the water.

"Tarrant, what -"

Closer to a strange pool of dark, glossy liquid, sitting amongst a beach-full of normal, salt-water-filled puddles and tide pools. "Tarrant, what is it?" Alice asked in a different voice as they walked up to it.

"It looks like the looking-glass," said Tarrant in a strange voice. "The one I got here by."

"Do you think it's the same sort of thing?" Alice asked sharply.

Tarrant shut his eyes, as though he were thinking hard. "All the words match," he said after a moment. "It seems to be the same. I think."

A wave, stronger than most, pushed up the beach and wrapped itself around their feet. The tiniest flicker of water cascaded over the lip of the pool and into the dark sheen covering the surface. A handful of transparent circles hung in the glossy liquid for a moment, like water mixing with oil. For an instant, Alice thought she saw the bottom of the tide pool through one of those lenses - a swirl of half-seen, gelatinous shapes writhing in agitation. Then the dark surface seemed to stabilize, and Alice was once more looking at a dark reflection of her own face.

"It _is_ like the mirror in Mamoreal," Tarrant said, and he almost sounded frightened. "All the reflections look like skulls- can't you see it, Alice?"

In truth, Alice could only see a pair of pale faces, thin and pinched, with dark circles looming around their eyes. Like two ghosts, staring out of the water with sea wrack tangled in their hair. Drowned sailors, Alice thought, might look very much like that

"How _much_ does it look like the mirror?" Alice asked again. "Is it the same thing?"

"It may be," said Tarrant. "I don't know. It may lead to Underland."

"It may lead anywhere," Alice replied. And it did feel like it ought to be a doorway. The glossy water had the same sort of depth to it, the feeling that it formed its own particular gravity, ready to pull you in at the slightest provocation and spit you out on a whim. The rabbit hole had felt like that. So, at times, had the _Wonder_. That it was a doorway, Alice was perfectly willing to accept on faith. Where it lead was another matter altogether. Chess games, or battles with Jabberwocks, or rooms with odd potions and keys that did not match any sensible locks...

"The question is," Alice asked the hatter, "Should we chance it?"

"Do we have any better alternatives?" he asked quietly.

_No. We don't. _"Only the impossible ones."

"Well, this one isn't any different, then," said Tarrant, with more of his usual chipper attitude evident in his voice. And added, "It doesn't look like it will stay together for very much longer, if the tide keeps coming in."

"I suppose it would be logical to test this one at a time," said Alice a little dubiously, but Tarrant was already cutting her off.

"Logic be damned," the hatter said firmly. "We are either going together or not at all."

"Together, then," Alice said, taking his hand. A quick look across the beach, not because she was saying goodbye to her own world, because she wasn't. She'd be back. But she was leaving again, and it seemed proper that she should at least acknowledge the moment. Beside her, Tarrant had eyes only for the strange doorway before them.

"If this doesn't go anywhere, I shan't be answerable for the condition of our feet," said Tarrant. "On three, then?"

"On three. One, two -"

* * *

In the wake of their sudden departure, a small, orange octopus cautiously groped its way out of the incoming surf and towards the tide pool - its den of choice when it was not out hunting crabs in the surrounding ocean. Seeing the unusual color of the water, the creature stopped short, extending one arm gingerly over the glossy liquid, sniffing carefully with several dozen of its sucker discs. The octopus appeared to come to some conclusion as to the nature of the transformed tide pool very quickly; it pulled its arm back towards itself with a shudder, and loped hastily back into the water. At the surf-line, the octopus looked back once over its many shoulders. It dove headfirst into the waves and did not surface again.

* * *

_~Puffin's Note - poems used this time are The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll, Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Shakespeare's Tempest and Julius Caesar and a misquoted Kraken by Tennyson. _ _Blow all the candles out is part of a traditional ballad._

_From this point forward - there will be likely four more chapters to this - the story will be joining up with the bits I've already written. Unfortunately, updates might be a little slower - first, because I'm likely going to be very particular about the next few chapters, and second, because I'm leaving in two days for a job in a more remote part of Alaska, and both writing time and internet access for updates will become scarce and valuable things. (In real life, I'm a marine-ish naturalist. Comes across in my writing? Hadn't noticed :)_

_Ta for now. _

_~Winter Puffin  
_


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

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_Puffin's Note - this is only half of what I originally planned for this chapter to contain, but y'all were due an update. _

_I an thrilled that this story continues to be found, read, enjoyed and reviewed. If you're reading this and like, or even if you don't, drop me a line and tell me so._

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The room in which Alice and Tarrant had landed was not where either of them had reasonably thought they would end up. Even by stretching the definition of 'reasonably' to allow for Tarrant's conjectures, this room appeared unusual even by Underland standards.

At first glance, it did not even appear to be a room at all. More, as Tarrant would come to understand much later, like a tomb.

* * *

To Tarrant, the most pertinent facet of their situation was that he was still soaking wet. He gasped into the darkness, not having been immersed long enough to even feel terribly out of breath, but gasping for air seemed a natural enough response to suddenly surfacing after diving head-over-heels between worlds. He panted for a moment, one hand pressed to his chest, trying to quell the sensation that a hamster was doing cartwheels in the space normally occupied by his heart. The hatter was floating, and aware that the water he was in was deep, (much deeper than the tide pool could have accounted for) and that it was dark. Not a complete, pitchy sort of blackness, but rather a pervasive sort of dim light, murky and low, and remarkable only for the fact that the source of the light was not immediately apparent - as though the glow leapt directly from the water itself.

Behind him, Tarrant heard a second gasp, and he looked over his shoulder to see Alice, hair plastered to her face, splashing about in the water behind him. She had a rather startled expression on her face, and was rubbing at her left shoulder as though it hurt. He struck out in an awkward sort of dog paddle and a moment later, she caught up to him.

"Are you quite all right?"

"Seem to be," Alice said. "You?"

"Yes."

His hands being occupied with treading water, Tarrant had to settle for looking Alice over carefully - at least, the bits of her visible above the water. She was looking him over as well, he noticed, eyes wide and a little startled. Alice's hands had dropped away from her shoulder, and Tarrant felt that his heart had gone back to its proper business of keeping a dancing rhythm. Still a little fast, mind you, but he wasn't going to argue with its choice of tempo. Satisfied that they had both made it through the tide pool door relatively unscathed, the hatter uneasily turned his attention to the space they had found themselves in.

"Over here," said Alice suddenly, and the pair sloshed their way through the water to the small corner Alice had spotted, where the water was not quite covering a small area of the floor, creating a damp square of gray flagstones about a dozen feet across. Tarrant stood for a moment, staring around him and wringing water out of the tails of his waistcoat. Aside from the dampness, it was noticeably more chill here than it had been on the beach.

"What a terribly unpleasant place," murmured Alice to no one in particular, and Tarrant had no reason to disagree with her assessment. The place in which they had found themselves (Tarrant supposed he might call it a room, the water notwithstanding) seemed to be a low, stonewalled vault, entirely awash with dark water. The arched gray walls were visible in the dim, ambiguous light, and looked much the same as the gray stone forming the floor they were currently standing on. The floor seemed to slope - at least, Tarrant was fairly sure that he could not touch the bottom at the place he first arrived - and even where he was standing he could feel the curve of the flagstones beneath his bare feet, curling back into the dark water surrounding them. He could see hardly anything of the floor, and wondered what else might be hidden under the surface.

The room looked, Tarrant thought, very much like a half-flooded catacomb - which thought convinced the hatter that he did not really want to know what the water was concealing. It would have been a very depressing place to find oneself within - except for the fact that there was a very clear exit from the room - a huge door, standing in the middle of the water like some dark, monumental stone.

"Do you suppose it actually goes anywhere?"

"I certainly hope that it does," said the hatter, who found this a rather odd remark. Just because a door might be located in the center of a room, instead of along one of its walls, did not mean that it wasn't in all other respects a perfectly functional door.

"I thought the doors out of the room at the bottom of the rabbit hole were odd, but this really takes the cake. At least the other doors had proper walls attached to them."

"Other doors?" Tarrant asked.

"When I came to Underland before," Alice explained. "There were doors at the bottom of the rabbit hole. All different sizes and all of them were locked. There was always a trick to opening them, you see. You never seem to be able to get anywhere in Underland directly."

The particular door before them was large, with a dark, clouded-glass look to its surface that Tarrant was beginning to find quite familiar - it had the same sort of opacity as the looking-glass in Mamoreal had, and more recently, the odd dark skim of water atop the tide pool that he and Alice had leapt through. And like the looking-glass, the door gave Tarrant the strangest feeling that there were things moving about within the door itself - things Tarrant felt he might not wish to examine too closely. The door was set within an arch of gray stone, of an identical make to the stone comprising the walls, floor, and ceiling of the low, looming room containing it.

"Shall we?" offered Alice, extending a hand. There was a smile there, Tarrant noticed, despite the damp and the chill and the way her hair was plastered against her face. That smile alone was reason to feel a little better about their present circumstances, and arm in arm, the pair slowly stepped back into the water, and made their way cautiously towards the door. It was only perhaps a dozen feet away, sitting in water not quite knee-deep. An ornate, metal handle sat a few feet above the water. Tarrant could see metal of a similar color binding the door along its edges. And beside the door...

"Dear me," said Tarrant suddenly, and Alice, who had been reaching for the handle, pulled her hand back with a start. Silently, Tarrant nodded towards the thing which had caught his attention.

Beside the door was a gray stone plaque, unremarkable apart from the fact that it was floating in midair with no apparent means of support. Tarrant looked more closely at it, stepping around to the far side to inspect the back, looking for any means to explain why the plaque persisted in its complete ignorance of the laws of gravity. Even to an Underland native such as Tarrant, something floating in midair without some means of support was an unusual, though not to say impossible, occurrence.

Resting on a small metal hook, dangled a tiny, curve-bladed knife.

"Dear me is right," said Alice, with an uneasy look at her companion. Unhesitatingly, she grasped the handle of the little blade and lifted it from its cradle. Several knife-related words began badgering Tarrant for his attention, and he shut his eyes rather than have to deal with them just now. Salazen Grum words, they were, and the Knave of Hearts had a blade that glimmered in just that manner.

"Put it back," he said to Alice.

"Hatter are you -"

"I simply," the hatter said, eyes still screwed shut, "Do not find anything the least bit pleasant about -"he choked on the word - "_that_ sort of thing."

"The knife?" And why did she have say it - the words were really working themselves into a state. "But I've seen your sword; it must be ten times the size of this old thing -"

Too inquisitive by half, was that girl. "The _claymore_," Tarrant replied, stressing the proper word, "is a word of an entirely different color, Alice. Now be a dear, and put that away," he continued, trying to sound nonchalant, though he felt himself moments away from physically batting the thing out of her hands. Or cowering in some corner where the water would cover him up and he wouldn't have to look at it at all.

"All right," she said, startled almost, and he heard the quick clatter of metal settling back onto its hook. Encouraged by this, Tarrant slapped the offending word hard on the nose and sternly ordered it back to the far corner of the paddock. Baring its teeth in a wolfish snarl, the word slunk away. Shaking his stinging hand, Tarrant glanced at the corner of the paddock where he had banished the rest of the nightmare-words. There seemed to be rather a lot of them, he thought nervously.

Pulling his attention back to the real world, Tarrant found that his hand still hurt from where where he had slapped the troublesome word. Unusual. Normally that sort of feeling stayed inside his paddock, once he himself had left. And there was Alice, staring at him as if he had gone completely off his head.

Had he looked up a moment sooner, he might have seen Alice with her hand pressed tightly to a reddening mark on her cheek. As it was, he simply found that she was staring at him as though she had never seen him before.

"Alice?" he asked, at a loss to explain her apparent discomfiture.

Alice declined to explain, merely turning away from the hatter and allowing her hair to fall concealingly over one side of her face.

Changing the subject, she pointed to the plaque from which hung the blade and asked, "Are those letters, Tarrant?"

They were, cursive and curlicued, and in a very old style of Outlandish. Tarrant cautiously stepped towards it, tracing a finger over the archaic, elaborate script, and scrupulously keeping his hands well clear of the treacherous little blade resting below them. "Let me see here... 'The key to your dreams is within your heart,'" translated Tarrant in a quiet voice.

"That's rather an odd bit of advice to be bestowing, given the circumstances," remarked Alice.

"Would the advice be less odd in different circumstances?" Tarrant asked

"Maybe," said Alice, although Tarrant hadn't actually expected a reply. "'The key to your dreams is within your heart'. It's both very straightforward, completely obvious and entirely nonsensical. Like caucus races. Or all those chess games."

"What's wrong with chess games?" Tarrant protested.

"Nothing - but it only seems a very odd setting for a phrase that might have come out of a particularly dull children's morality primer," Alice remarked, in a tighter tone of voice than she was usually wont to use. It occurred to Tarrant that Alice, like himself, must be getting tired of getting wet as often as they ahd been doing. A pattern Tarrant hoped that they would soon discontinue.

"Well, odd is certainly something that Underland specializes in," Alice continued. "And this is odd enough that I think we must be in Underland for sure."

And she reached for the handle on the dark wooden door.

Somehow, Tarrant was unsurprised when it completely failed to budge.

* * *

After a few moments' fruitless tugging, Alice dropped her hands to her sides. Putting one hand at her hip, Alice stared at the door, as though the intensity of her gaze alone might be enough to compel it to swing open. Nothing of the sort happened, but a moment later, Alice narrowed her eyes. Then she gasped, the sound oddly muffled by the water and stone, and her eyes opened very wide.

"Alice?" Tarrant asked, and again, louder, as she seemed not to hear him. Her face was oddly slack and she was still staring at the door. Tarrant glanced at it himself, but could see nothing - only the odd, glossy surface, the faintest impression of something within the surface lazily stirring itself. What was it that she was seeing - and why was it not apparent to him?

Just at the moment Tarrant decided he had better intervene, Alice stumbled backwards, shaking her head as though trying to clear it of cobwebs. Dazedly, she sloshed through the water back the way they had come, and Tarrant anxiously fell into step beside her as they made their way to the small patch of dry ground.

"Be a good lass and say something, my dear," said Tarrant, trying to make light of his worry - her slack face and wide eyes, and she still had not said anything to him.

Even in Underland, seeing things that other people couldn't was not generally considered a good sign. As Tarrant had ample reason to know.

"I'm quite all right, Hatter," said Alice, but her smile did not quite touch her eyes, and her voice sounded strained to the hatter's ears, as though she were close to bursting into laughter. Or to tears - the hatter had no idea which.

"But what were you looking at?" Tarrant pressed. "You were somewhere else for a moment, I think. What did you see?"

"There was -" But there she broke off, biting at her lip as though thinking better of what she had been about to say. "My dreams. They're in there, Hatter. Just like it says."

Uneasily Tarrant glanced back at the door, with its curious accompanying message. The key to your dreams is within your heart.

Try as he might, Alice refused to say another word about what she had seen in the door.

* * *

They sat together for a short while, side by side on the damp gray stones. Alice still seemed to be half lost in thought; though ever so often, Tarrant would catch her shooting a sharp glance back at the door. She seemed to be avoiding looking at it for anything more than a second - a brief glance, then she tore her eyes away. Instead she seemed to watch the flagstones, eyes tracing some invisible pattern within their cold, gray surface.

"Well," said Tarrant eventually, and stood up. Though he said nothing else, Alice appeared to guess his intentions. Or perhaps it was that there was simply nothing else in the room that he would be likely to wish to investigate. She gave him a slight nod, and very deliberately turned away from the door, one knee pulled up under her chin.

Very well, thought the hatter, a bit stubbornly. If Alice was not going to be forthcoming about what she had seen, he had better simply take a look himself. Slowly, the hatter sloshed over to the door, adjusting the cuffs of his coat nervously as he did so.

First things first. Alice hadn't been able to open the door,but it seemed sensible that he ought to give it a try directly. He hadn't as much experience as Alice with this sort of thing, but he was an Underland native himself. Perhaps that counted for something.

Close enough to touch it, now. A little diffidently, Tarrant put his hand to the handle, iron-cold against his fingers, and pulled. As before, it didn't even quiver. Even a locked door might be expected to creak and complain a little when pulled, but this door felt more like it was physically joined to its frame, sitting in the middle of the flooded room. As though it was never meant to be opened at all.

Not a comforting notion. Nervously, Tarrant looked around the room, examining it more closely. A low stone ceiling, arched walls, drowned flagstones. Standing water, with no sign of any current or drain. No other apparent exits. No way out but one, inexplicably uncooperative doorway.

The room looked, he thought, very much like a tomb.

They hadn't had any food on the beach either, Tarrant supposed, but at least in the Aboveground world there had been the prospect of getting some. Tarrant put a hand to the frame of the door and leaned against it, suddenly feeling entirely inadequate to the problem escaping their present situation. He'd been in worse fixes himself from time to time - Salazen Grum came to mind, as did his near-drowning in the Andaman Sea - but Alice would be in danger this time. Funny. One would think the notion of not dying alone would be a comforting one. Instead, there was only the dull realization that he had inadvertently pulled Alice into this mess along with him.

Another flicker out of the corner of his eye, and Tarrant looked back at the door. Close enough to touch it, now. Close enough to see the faint suggestion of movement within the glossy surface. (_And what was it Alice had seen there, that she was so reluctant to speak of?_) Dark, and mirror-like. Just like the looking-glass in Mamoreal. Just like the tide pool that had brought them to - to wherever it was they were now. An encouraging sign that it was a right, proper, worlds-crossing door, Tarrant told himself. Less encouraging was the fact that they couldn't open it. As of yet, the hatter mentally added.

Tarrant fiddled again with his sleeves, still soaking wet. No sense putting it off any longer. Very deliberately, Tarrant narrowed his eyes and looked directly at the door. The shadow figures, or whatever they were, slowly began to glimmer and slide along the surface of the wood. The hatter felt a prickle along the back of his neck, accompanied by the distinct feeling that he was being watched. As though the very fact of his looking at the doorway had brought the stone and wood to some lazy sort of attention. The hatter had a moment to consider that perhaps he would be better off not disturbing whatever it was that was regarding him. Then the images flickered into being, and Tarrant found that he did not wish to look away.

Alice had been all wrong, he thought vaguely. There was nothing at all frightening about this odd door; why, it was only showing an image of himself. And it seemed quite a pleasant place for this not-Tarrant to be - there were flowers, and the sun was shining. Somehow, Tarrant knew that in the place he saw, it was warm, and the wind would be blowing playfully with his hair. The wind _was_ playing with his hair, Tarrant swore he could feel it tickling along the back of his neck. He was in the garden near the windmill, Tarrant realized with a start - but never in _his_ garden had it ever been as sunny as this, or as warm. The tea tables were set, as they always were, but the cloth covering them was fresh and crisp, the white linens freshly starched and unstained. The china sitting atop it was perfect - unchipped and flawless, covered with wild designs of peacocks and violets. Steam was rising from the teapot, scones sat on a plate, already sliced and covered with marmalade.

The windmill had never looked like this, pointed out that part of Tarrant still able to consider the scene objectively. He had wanted his home to be such a place, once, cozy and delightful and organized. Everything perfect and orderly, like stitches lining up one after another, and all in their proper place. Easy to picture it, harder to bring it into being. But there were always too many broken dishes, holes in the tablecloth, jam stains everywhere. Easy to blame the destruction on Thackeray, and say that there was never enough time to put it to rights, and that chipped teapots had more character to them. One of a kind, they were. Unique. Individual. He had an affinity for dishes of character, he used to say. A sympathy for broken things. Much better to cultivate that attitude, than to consider the unsettling counter-proposition.

That order and perfection, excepting in matters of haberdashery, was quite beyond his ability to cultivate.

Except that apparently this not-Tarrant (nonchalantly strolling through the grass, and Tarrant could feel the stalks bending under his own feet) had managed to pull it off, and the actual Tarrant dearly wished to learn his secret. The hatter was so busy drinking in the sight of the windmill, that he almost didn't notice the small figure walking up to the not-Tarrant.

Ah, it's Alice, Tarrant thought happily. Well, if this is a perfect garden, then of course she would be here. Wouldn't be perfect at all, otherwise. But this was an Alice that Tarrant had not seen for years - this was the younger one, her hair even longer and more disheveled than it was as an adult, barefoot, the hem of her petticoat dragging on the grass as she walked.

Was this a memory, then? Somehow, Tarrant didn't think so. And then the girl was at the not-Tarrant's elbow, only it was _his_ elbow, and she was pulling at the tails of his waistcoat (dry, and velveteen, and he recognized his stitching, though he had no memory of ever making this particular garment). Another question, thought the hatter, fondly regarding the top of the girl's head. She was always so full of them.

"What is it, Alice?" he asked the girl.

The girl dropped his waistcoat tails impatiently, and put her hand to her hip, her bottom lip jutting out mulishly.

"I am _not_ Alice," she said petulantly, and looked up at him.

It was then that he saw her eyes. Green eyes, set above wide cheekbones. _Green_ eyes. But the hair was definitely Alice's. So was the quirk of her lips, the smile hiding just in the corner.

"Hatta?" she chirped in a high voice.

* * *

Tarrant jumped, flinched almost in surprise, and the cold water was like a slap across the face. He was knee deep in the water, and shivering, and Alice, the real, proper-sized Alice had a hand on his shoulder.

"Hatter?" she asked again.

"Yes, fine, certainly; terribly sorry," Tarrant mumbled. The conjectures were skittering through his head faster than he could make sense of them. A child, certainly. A girl, with Hightopp eyes and Alice 's hair. Dreams. The key to your dreams. And such dreams they were, Tarrant...

If _that_ was what lay on the other side of the impossible door -

Unable to stop himself, Tarrant pulled free of Alice's arm and strode directly to the door. He grabbed the curved handle, feeling the cold of the metal against his skin, and pulled. Both hands, then, pulling as hard as he could, and there was a girl on the other side, wasn't there? A girl who had questions that he might answer, torn stockings he might mend, a girl who might ride pick-a-back on his shoulders, a girl he might sing lullabies to, late at night when the wind was blowing.

"Tarrant," he heard someone calling, and he spun around, momentarily confused as to who was calling him. There was a girl, but this wasn't the one he was trying to find - too tall, and her eyes weren't green. The wrong girl - but precious to him, nonetheless. Infinitely so.

Alice put out a hand to him, a sad look on her face.

"Tarrant,"she said again, quieter. Tarrant slowly became aware that his shoulders hurt. A quick glance at his fingers showed them white - whiter than usual, anyway - from the tightness of his grip on the handle.

The door hadn't moved an inch. Hadn't even as much as quivered.

Slowly, the hatter stepped away, feeling as though he was abandoning something. Or someone. And it was a someone that he loved, even if he wasn't quite sure that the someone was real.

"They aren't promises," said Alice in a choked voice. "Whatever it showed you. They aren't real."

"But the girl - Alice, you must -" and he broke off, for Alice was shaking her head. "The girl. Didn't you _see_ her?"

"I didn't see any girl, Tarrant," she said in a soft voice. "I think - the dreams are different. What it shows us."

The key to your dreams. Your dreams. Meaning his, Tarrant's own. Not Alice's. Not necessarily Alice's, he amended quickly.

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her - what did you see, but he choked back the question at the last moment. He had seen bits of her dreams, over the last two days. Amber, they were, bits of silver and gold. Sailing ships and strange, foreign cities. There was no place for tea tables in such a world as Tarrant had seen it. No place for gardens of talking flowers, or lazy mornings in the windmill, toasting crumpets over the fireplace and listening to the rain drumming on the roof...

What was it that she had said to him, that night in her cabin on the _Wyckham_? _I am living my life how I wanted. How many people can say that and really believe it?_

If Alice really and truly believed that her home and her life were elsewhere, then Tarrant would rather not know. If the Aboveground world was Alice's goal, well, Tarrant had had quite enough of that world already.

Were those still Alice's dreams? Tarrant would like to believe that had changed in the past thirty hours - she had gone with him after all, was here with him now; that had to be worth something. They were trying to get to Underland; never mind that they were having a startling lack of success in getting there. But it seemed unwise to ask it straight out - by the way, Alice, do your dreams perchance involve remaining in Underland for good, and abandoning the work you've devoted yourself to for the past two years? Do your dreams perchance include raising a daughter? A daughter who looks strikingly like me?

But Alice hadn't seen the girl. The girl with yellow hair and green eyes, who might be ours, Alice. Yours and mine. Yours, Alice, and you didn't see her. Because she isn't your dream.

Tarrant thought it might just be possible to scrounge up the tiniest morsel of hate against Alice, were that to be true. Far better not to ask.

Tarrant drug himself out of the water with an effort, and as he did so, the room seemed to come back into sharper focus. So did the cold, and the dampness, the shivers running along his arms, and the vaguest beginnings of an ache of hunger in his stomach.

"Do you think," Tarrant asked, softy, "that these dreams _could_ be real?"

"I don't know," said Alice, looking at him steadily. "But _this_ is real, Tarrant. Here and now. Remember that."

The room, the cold, and the hunger. Our trap and perhaps our grave, Alice.

But that was not what Alice meant at all, the hatter realized, as she took his hand, raised it to her lips and gently brushed them across his knuckles.

Tarrant's answer was muffled, face pressed against her hair. "So it is, Alice."

* * *

The hours in the room went like this.

Prowling the stone walls; examining the stone facings piece by piece, looking and failing to find a loose panel. Feeling along the floor, as much as was possible in the flooded room. Tarrant even resorted to swimming, diving under and feeling along the submerged stonework, scrabbling blindly against the rock. Coming up with lungs burning, grit making their way into the corners of his eyes and matting into his hair.

Alice perched on Tarrant's shoulders, feeling along the curves and arches of the low ceiling. Equally fruitlessly.

Wrinkled fingers, hands rubbed against each other for warmth. Alice, wringing out the hem of her dress for what must be the dozenth time.

Brief glances at the surface of the door, both of them cautious about being drawn too far into any illusion it might show them. Both of them wondering darkly whether at some stage, it mightn't be better to fall into an illusion entirely, if it meant escaping the cold, the water and the choking miasma of their own growing fear.

Resting briefly, sleeping for some hours, then waking and searching the room over again, top to bottom.

Lying in a cold huddle on the damp stones, exhausted and shivering under the unchanging gloaming light of the room. And always, always, footsteps and glances leading them back to the siren visage of the impossible, immoveable door.

* * *

Tarrant came to himself sitting in an overstuffed wing back chair in the tower room of the windmill. Out of habit, he began to rise from the chair, but paused with his hands still gripping the arms, peering about the room suspiciously. Tarrant knew that in most dreams, it ought to feel perfectly natural that he should find himself in an entirely different place from when he went to sleep. But in this particular dream (and Tarrant was reasonably sure he was dreaming), finding himself in the windmill seemed somehow unexpected - as though he were not meant to be dreaming about the windmill at all.

A single footstep sounded from the roof above Tarrant's head and the hatter did jump out of his chair, for in the windmill Tarrant remembered, there ought to be nothing above his head but the roof. Apparently, in this not-windmill, there was something else, and that something else was directly above where he now stood, anxiously listening for the sound to repeat itself. He heard... not a footstep, but wind? Yes, the distinct whistle of wind in the sails, and the slap of waves against a wooden hull. Hull? The lamp was flickering strangely - had the wooden walls of his home always looked so much like ship's timbers?

Nightmares were, unfortunately, a natural consequence of having so many feral words inhabiting his paddock all at once; Tarrant had some unwilling familiarity with their ability to disturb both his sleep and his waking activities. If _this_ was how things were to play themselves out, then he needn't be caught unprepared. The claymore wasn't here, but there were other things that might do in a pinch.

Crossing to the desk, the hatter threw open a drawer, shuffling quickly through its contents. Another footstep crashed on the ceiling above Tarrant's head and the hatter flinched. Thimbles, spools, eyelets, needles, and yes, hat pins; he snatched up the longest and sharpest-looking hat pin he could find. A sound behind him - a light step and a whisper of fabric and Tarrant whirled around, brandishing the hat pin before him like a sword.

The girl jumped backwards with a shriek, skidding on the wooden floor in her stocking feet. _Her_ again - yellow hair, and green eyes. Impossible, delightful, wonderful creature. Tarrant thought he might fall over himself in surprise and relief. After a moment gaping at the girl in shock, he whirled to the desk, flung open the drawer and quickly threw the hat pin back inside. Best if she didn't see it; if she were anything like Alice she'd certainly ask questions. He turned back to the girl, still leaning against the desk, unsure if his knees were currently up to the task of supporting him. The impossible girl was watching him curiously, green eyes wide in her pale face.

"Well, let me have a look at you." he said finally. He was breathing fast, he noticed, as though he had been running.

Obediently, the girl spun around in a slow pirouette. The hair was certainly Alice's. She was wearing a green taffeta dress with lace at the hem - the color brought out her eyes. All ten slender fingers, ten barefoot toes. She belonged, Tarrant thought, in the dream world - the perfect, mirror-image of the windmill that the door had shown him. Tarrant knew beyond any doubt that she belonged to that dream world because she herself was perfect, you see.

Best not to tell her straight out, though. Tarrant well remembered that Alice at that age could be extraordinarily conceited at times.

"You ought to cut your hair," he said, the words feeling somehow familiar. "And you really ought to be wearing shoes and stockings, milady. All of the most important and respectable people do. A terrible oversight in your wardrobe." The hatter wiggled his own bare toes as he spoke and the girl grinned at him. There was a tiny gap between her front teeth.

Tarrant found himself dropping unsteadily to his knees without ever consciously deciding to do so. He had once fallen from a horse, Tarrant remembered, landing hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. The sensation of complete and utter disorientation was not dissimilar to this.

The gap-toothed girl did not seem to notice; she was busy trying to get a stray ringlet to curl round her finger.

"I look like this because that's how you remember me,"the girl said, as though she were explaining something that the hatter ought already to know. 'So cutting my hair won't do any good."

"_Remember_ you?" repeated the hatter, momentarily reassessing who it was he was speaking to and coming up with the same overwhelmingly probable answer. "I don't believe we've even properly met."

"Of course not," said the girl in the same exasperated tone. "That's because I don't actually exist."

Mildly alarmed at that, but trying not to let on that he was, the hatter gently brushed at the girl's hair with his fingers, pushing the errant ringlet behind her ear.

"Another matter we must immediately rectify," he said quietly.

The girl grinned again, and abruptly her face turned serious, a worried expression (which Tarrant had on occasion seen inhabiting Alice's face) dropping across her features like someone dousing a light.

"You haven't much time," the girl said, green eyes searching her face. "Everything's going to fall to pieces, very soon."

"How do you know that?" Tarrant asked her, more sharply than he meant to. Alice had told him that these dreams weren't real - though that was only her opinion; Tarrant begged to differ. This certainly could _become_ real, even if it wasn't real at the moment. Regardless, the hatter was suddenly impressed with the notion that he ought to know where the girl's information was coming from.

"I know it because that's what _you_ believe will happen," said the girl. "Isn't it?"

Well, yes it was. But before Tarrant had time to properly digest this, he heard a loud crash from the impossible room above, followed a moment later by a low, chucking laugh. It was not a pleasant noise.

"What was that?" the girl hissed, eyes a little wider than they had been a moment before, nervously looking in the direction of the sound.

"Well, you aren't the only thing I remember, you see, and some of the other memories are coming to call," Tarrant replied briskly, trying to affect a nonchalance about the entire matter. And I will be damned, the hatter added silently, if you and them will ever inhabit the same room. Now, what to do? Ought to shoo her back outside. Best thing for her, really. Perhaps she'll go back to her mother. Wherever her mother is in this world of dreams and memories...

"Now," the hatter said briskly, clapping his hands together. "Give us a kiss and run along."

The impossible girl looked at him dubiously, as though she suspected that he was keeping something from her that she would want to know. But after a moment, she stepped forward and tilted her head, allowing Tarrant to lay a feather-light kiss on the top of her hair. "You're a good girl, my darling. Now run along."

She skipped towards the door (the proper one, leading, in the normal course of things, to outside the windmill) and opened it. The hatter caught an impression of a green, perfect garden stretching out beyond it. She paused with the door still ajar.

"We pick the forget-me-nots," the girl called back to him, a silhouette against the light of the impossible garden. "Every spring."

The hatter had half a mind to call her back and ask her more about the forget-me-nots, because he could hardly stand to see her walk out the door when he'd hardly gotten the chance even to look at her.

Another thump echoed from the waiting nightmare, a rattling and yowling echo of ropes and chain. Tarrant startled; when he turned around the girl had already gone. Trying the door that she had gone through, the hatter, unsurprisingly, found it to be locked.

_We pick the forget-me-nots. Every spring. _

Why had she told him that? Who was it that they were remembering? And why had she thought it so important that he know?

Another thump, louder or closer; Tarrant could not tell which. Pushing that away as a question to be dealt with at a more opportune time, Tarrant crossed to the desk and threw open the drawer, scrabbling furiously about the bric-a-brac until he relocated the hat pin.

Back planted firmly against a wall, Tarrant held the hat pin tightly in his sweat-slickened palm, listening to the sounds of footsteps in impossible room atop the windmill, and wondering why he had never seen fit to relocate his claymore inside his dwelling.

* * *

"How are you feeling ?" Alice asked him tentatively.

Tarrant had been aware of two things immediately upon waking from the nightmare. The first was that he had undoubtedly been crying out, though the precise details of what he had said eluded him. The second was that Alice had been watching, one of her hands hovering indecisively over his shoulder, as though she had been debating whether or not to shake him awake. The notion that Alice had been observing him as he slept was not a comforting thought; Tarrant had too much experience with being considered a curiosity to be at ease with the thought of someone observing his dreams. Even if that someone were Alice. Or rather, especially if that someone were Alice. The one person in the world who (Tarrant hoped) did not consider him to be irredeemably mad. And though Alice had often shown a willingness to overlook (or even seemingly to enjoy) his more minor eccentricities, he had no wish to expose her to any bit of himself that might alter her opinion of him.

After a moment, the hatter replied to her question, still staring firmly at the far wall, and absently rubbing a hand across his stomach.

"Quite well," the hatter replied, falling back on bland pleasantries, as he certainly was not about to give her the real answer. Tarrant was aware how ridiculous the phrase sounded in their current situation. But still better than - _No Alice. I am cold and I am frightened. I am terribly hungry and my head hurts. I wish I could be stronger and I wish you hadn't watched._

And then, just to change the subject, he added, "Alice, do you think its gotten darker in here?"

"I don't think so," she replied, brushing back a lock of damp hair. "Perhaps its just because we were sleeping."

Tarrant shifted, rubbing his hand harder against his stomach without quite being aware of doing so. A dull cramp had taken up permanent residence in his side; he was beginning to find it difficult to concentrate. How long had it been since they'd eaten? It was on the dinghy, wasn't it, and there had been apples. They had slept since then - had it been hours that they had been trapped here, or were they already counting days? There was nothing in the changeless room to tell him one way or another. No ticking clocks or lengthening shadows. Only the haunted look settling into Alice's face; the growing ache of hunger in his belly and his head.

It occurred to Tarrant that perhaps they were not counting the hours they had spent; perhaps they would do better counting the hours remaining.

Some dark edge of that thought must have crept into his face, for Alice wrinkled up her brow and pursed her lips and Tarrant knew what she was going to ask.

"Hatter, are you sure you're -"

"_Quite." _And added peevishly, "And I can still toss you into the water if you ask that question again."

"Hatter, I am simply -"

"It is only," the hatter sniffed. "That I disapprove of the question in general. It's a matter of principle, you know."

"If you say so,' Alice replied in a tone that suggested she didn't agree but was prepared to placate him by not arguing the point. She wrapped her skirts more tightly around her and put an arm on Tarrant's shoulder, wordlessly encouraging him to lie back down. After a moment he did so, huddling close and tucking his hands, wrinkling with water and pale with cold, back into the sleeves of his waistcoat.

* * *

Tarrant roused several times after that, as Alice got to her feet and tiptoed through the water towards the impossible door. Each time he heard the light splash of her feet as she walked round it, the low rasp of her hands across the metal of the handle. And each time, the girl returned to the hatter, head held low and she would not meet his eye. Darkly, Tarrant wondered what Alice might see in the door that would incite such fierce determination in her.

Concern for their own fate? Or, the hatter could not help wondering, a desire to recapture her own Aboveground dreams? To take for herself whatever it was she had seen in the door and had refused to discuss with him?

Lying on the damp stones, an arm about her shoulders, Tarrant wondered whether such thoughts might be considered disloyal. But whether the fault lay with himself, or with the girl sleeping fitfully at his side, Tarrant could not for the life of him decide.

* * *

_Puffin's Note - Review, review, review. Thanks as always for continuing to follow along. Another chapter should be posted soon-ish._


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

_Puffin's Note - Soon-ish is here - three weeks late. (Blame mad amounts of rain and some really, really unpleasant guests at the lodge I guide at. The combination was sucking my will to live.) _

_This chapter contains some of the first bits and pieces that I wrote for this fic, and is absolutely what I consider the heart of this story. _ _Thanks to those folks still reviewing, especially to drowning hats and tea and kousagi, who both reviewed several chapters. Also kudos to ILoveYourCreativity, who made a really good guess. Everyone's continuing enthusiasm for this story is appreciated. _

_I dislike posting content warnings, as I consider them too much of a giveaway for elements I would prefer to address in the story itself, in their own time. However, I feel I must post this chapter with a gigantic, flashing content warning - the following contains very explicit references to suicide, and to the death of a character._

_Consider yourself forewarned._

_

* * *

_

The dreams in the door were moving again, Tarrant noticed laconically. Tiny flickers of images - green eyes, looking slantwise at him in odd moments, and vanishing the instant he dared to look directly at them. The girl again, Tarrant thought. The impossible girl.

The hatter attempted to shut his eyes, but one could not simply ignore the images for very long, especially when they were the only other thing in the entire room (other than himself and the real Alice) that ever did anything interesting. Or ever changed at all, come to think of it. Absently, Tarrant fiddled with the sodden sleeves of his coat. Then stretched first one leg and then the other, rubbing, as always, at the persistent ache at his side. Trying to keep from looking at the door for anything more than brief glances. At least, Tarrant mused, there was plenty of water. Though how long it was likely to remain drinkable with the both of them trapped in here was a question Tarrant did not want to consider very closely.

Why not, though. Why not let the dreams take you in? It isn't like our situation is likely to improve. In fact, there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Or wander into your word paddock until everything is over. Walk away and don't come out. Not until you have to. Not until the very end.

It was snowing, somewhere behind his eyes, piling up in wet, soggy drifts. The words in his paddock were complaining, huffing and lowing to one another anxiously. They seemed to be suffering from the cold almost as much as he was, poor things. It was strange, though - Tarrant had never known it to snow in his paddock before.

Alice stirred, murmuring something in her sleep, and Tarrant knew that, unfortunately, he was bound to see this through in its entirety. He would not leave Alice alone - or as good as alone - if he retreated into the recesses of his own head. She deserved better than that from him, and if these moments with her were the only moments that he was going to get - best make use of them. Best hold on to every instant. They would all get away from him eventually. Best make them last.

So, make use of them, Tarrant, the hatter told himself sternly. Get up. Do something. Solve this. Save yourself. Tarrant had the unsettling notion that all of the pieces of the puzzle were sitting right in front of him, as yet unrecognized. All he had to do was find the pieces and put them together. Unwarranted optimism, perhaps? It wasn't as if they hadn't been _trying_ to get out. (For three days now. God, my head hurts.) So put it to use, old boy. It's not as if there's anything else that needs seeing to, right now.

_ The key to your dreams is within your heart. _ It was the sort of advice one might receive from a particularly cheerful breed of schoolteacher. So why, in these circumstances, do I find this bland arrangement of words to be so unsettling?

Well, start from the beginning and take it apart. First of all, believe that the door really is a door. Believe that it can be opened - we just haven't figured out how. Take it on faith that the room is a gateway, but it's also a puzzle. Alice says that it is, and she's been through these sorts of rooms before, so she ought to know. So, we have a door. And the plaque says that there is a key - that's a very good start, because we need one of those. _The key to your dreams is within your heart. _We have the dreams - two sets in fact, something of a surplus. Mine, and Alice's. Now how to put them together? _The key to your dreams is within your heart. _

And the room had given them a knife. Why on earth would that be of any use to -

- unless the key that the plaque mentioned was _actually -_

- the heart was _actually_ -

- the key is within -

- then what would the knife be for but to_ get at_ the -

The implications of these particular words were too much to tolerate sitting down; Tarrant felt he ought to be on his feet to deal with them properly. He rolled away from Alice, shrugging out from under the sodden waistcoat and pulling himself onto hands and knees. The chill air against his belly was a shock, and he got to his feet panting.

Tarrant remembered the fluttering sensation deep in his chest, when he first arrived in the room between worlds. The way Alice had come out of the water, gasping, with her hand pressed to her chest - pressed to her heart. _-the key to your dreams- _As though something had happened to it. As though something had been _done_ to them - _is within your heart -_ and, dear God, if that was the only way out -

Please let this be another of the bad times. Those moments and hours when he did not see the world as it properly was, when dreams and nightmares intruded into his waking world and he could not properly tell the difference. Please let that be now. But this - made a horrible, desperate sort of sense. Dreams, and keys, and a knife. Call it a means of extraction? ( Oh god -) And a brooding, jealous sort of magic that might not be appeased in any other way...

Scrabbling for the buttons on his shirt, Tarrant put a hand to his chest, pressing at the bare skin as if he might find the flesh already torn away. But there was only skin, smooth and feeling much as it always did. Cool to the touch now; clammy and shivering slightly; a heartbeat matching the stuttering rhythm of his breath. Tarrant closed his eyes then, hand pressed tightly against his chest, searching for any feeling that something was buried there, something that was not supposed to be there. Iron, it would be, old and dark, like the metal bonds that curled about the wood of the impossible door. Or would it be stone, gray like the walls around them, featureless and so very, very cold. Wrapped around his heart and choking it, killing it -

Stop it, Tarrant told himself. You're just frightening yourself. This is impossible. This is horrible. This is terrible, and treacherous, and this is very, very real.

Tarrant glanced at the door, as though he had expected it to change in the interim, now that he knew what it wanted. Suspected what it wanted, he corrected. It seemed darker, the patterns within the door roiling beneath its surface like a distant storm. And his dreams? Tarrant was suddenly convinced that he did not want to look any closer - did not want to see any of those things that he might consider dear enough to pay for them with his very -

Need it be his life, though? There were two of them in the room - there would be two keys - _two_ keys - and the knife was waiting and she was already sleeping -

_ No. _

Tarrant suddenly felt as though he were about to be sick. He turned away from the door, staggering into the water, one hand pressed to his forehead. He had to think; it made sense, but such a terrible kind of sense, and he ought to wake Alice, because she would probably tell him that the whole thing was nonsense, and that he was mad anyway.

He desperately, desperately wanted it to be nonsense. For the alternative -

Tarrant choked back a mouthful of bile and pulled his hand slowly out of his shirt. Mechanically, the hatter began to do up the buttons. Simple actions, rote motions he had performed hundreds of times before, but Tarrant found himself transfixed by the motions of his own fingers, the tendons and bones looking suddenly fragile beneath his porcelain skin. He wanted this notion to be nonsense. But somehow, the hatter didn't think that it was.

_ We aren't getting out of here together, Alice. It's either that, or we aren't getting out at all._

Looking up, the hatter suddenly saw that he and Alice were no longer alone in the impossible room.

* * *

The figure was standing a dozen feet away, and was regarding Tarrant with a curious, almost proprietary, expression. Putting a hand to its chin, the shape glided slowly towards the hatter, making an odd humming noise in the back of its throat.

Its an Idea, thought Tarrant. Like the Idea that got me here in the first place, all the way back in Mamoreal. But this Idea wasn't pretty at all. Its body was twisted and bald and covered with weeping, festering little sores. Despite that, it was dressed rather smartly, in a black waistcoat with a paisley cummerbund. Its starched white shirt and freshly pressed trousers seemed entirely indifferent to the water it was standing in. Altogether, though, the Idea was utterly repulsive to look at. That was how Tarrant knew that it was probably a Bad Idea.

"Now let me see." The Bad Idea made another hemming noise in the back of its throat and began ticking off things on its fingers. "Desperate situation, leading to a horrible and unavoidable end, yes; un requited love, very nice. Recent traumatic events, always helpful; and my, you're already considered to be somewhat, hmmm, how shall we say -"

"Mad," said Tarrant bluntly. "Now, excuse me, but who -"

"I am only saying, you seem quite a promising lad for this sort of thing."

"What sort of thing?" Tarrant asked in a low voice, fairly certain that he already knew, but hardly eager for the Bad Idea to confirm it.

The Bad Idea chuckled, as if at a child who had said something unintentionally amusing. "My dear man, you already know, or I would not be here in the first place. I am, after all, _your_ Idea."

"No, you're not," Tarrant told it firmly, shooting a sharp glance at Alice. Still asleep, thank goodness - it wouldn't do for her to be overhearing any of this. "You are either a Mad Notion, or a Dream. And I am not going to have anything to do with either one."

"Call me whatever you want, but I _am_ your Idea. And just so you know, I happen to be a very old Idea. And on occasion, a very powerful one. I've been around for quite a long time, you realize."

"Have you." Tarrant said flatly, trying to make it clear that he had no wish to continue this conversation.

"You know the stories - Brutus, and Marc Antony? Cleopatra and the asp? Half the lines in _Hamlet_. And _Romeo and Juliet_? I couldn't pay for that sort of exposure. Sweet girl, too. Took a terribly long time about it, lots of blood, poor thing. Thirteen-year-olds simply have no notion of how to go about it properly..." The Bad Idea's expression was almost wistful.

"I don't care how many young lovers you've been speaking with, or how many madmen." Tarrant said. "You are still a Bad Idea. I have nothing to say to you, _no_ interest in listening to anything you have to say, and I would be very obliged if you would leave us alone. _Immediately_."

Strangely, the Bad Idea perked up at that, as though Tarrant had presented him with a divertingly difficult sort of puzzle. He looked more closely at Tarrant, who folded his arms and tried to look imposing.

"My dear man, I am only here in the first place because you thought me up. I'm here to help you accomplish - "

"_No_."

"Certain goals," the Idea finished delicately.

"Prove it," said Tarrant flatly. "Open the door."

The Bad Idea gestured eloquently towards the knife, still hanging by its hook. "Gladly. Provided that you fetch the key." The look in the Idea's festering face was lean and wolfish.

"If you don't intend to help us," Tarrant said with a pointed look, "Then you can leave. Now." He deliberately turned his back on the Idea and walked back over to Alice. The waistcoat was only partially covering her shoulders, thrown onto the stones in his haste to get to his feet. Tarrant carefully rearranged it so that it was covering more of her body. There were already bruises beginning to darken her eyes - and wherever had she gotten that mark across her cheek? It almost looked as though something had hit her, but Tarrant had no notion of what it might have been.

"Oh, brilliant priorities," called the Bad Idea in a peeved tone. "You shall starve, of course, you'll turn on each other like ravens before the end, but at least she shan't catch cold before it happens."

"It's the least I can do," said Tarrant hotly, turning back to the Idea with a glare. Which withered in seconds, as the Bad Idea was now holding the knife, absently running the blade through its wart-covered hands.

"And the most you could do?" asked the Bad Idea with a wolfish smile. "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, et cetera?"

"_No_. You are a Bad Idea; you've as good as admitted that yourself. And I do not listen to Bad Ideas. Especially Ideas as disagreeable as you."

"Whether or not I am a Bad Idea or not depends entirely on the alternatives," said the Bad Idea equitably. "Believe me, there are some equally distressing Notions flitting about your head -"

"-I've already told you -"

"-That only require a little more consideration to become full-fledged Ideas -"

"-that I am not going to listen to a single thing you say -"

" - Starvation, for example. Or Drowning - never invite that Idea over for tea, it always ruins the upholstery-"

"We are _not_ going to die here -"

"I believe you have already given some trifling thought to Murder -"

"I am _not_ going to kill -"

"Given your particular feelings for your companion, we could even add Ra-"

Furious, Tarrant lunged at the Bad Idea, snatching the knife out of its hands and shoving the tip of the blade over the Idea's heart. Tarrant was panting, completely at a loss as to what he was going to do next, but certain that anything would be better than continuing to listen to the Idea hold forth. Unruffled, the Idea folded its hands over its stomach in an irritated manner and rolled its eyes.

"You aren't going to get anywhere waving that thing at me, my dear man," it said. "Have you any notion of how hard it is to kill an Idea?"

"None whatsoever," said Tarrant, digging the knife point more firmly into the Idea's chest. And stopping suddenly with a gasp. For although he could clearly see the knifepoint pointed at the Idea, even see the dimple in the fabric where the blade was rumpling the Idea's black waistcoat, he distinctly felt the point of the blade at his own throat, pressing against his skin in a hot little line, just as he remembered from Salazen Grun.

Tarrant dropped the blade with a moan and clapped a hand over the cut, shocked. The Idea uncrossed its arms and tut-tutted at Tarrant unsympathetically. "You see what happens when you grow violent when I'm around? No one ever thinks; well, perhaps I ought _not_ to take up arms against a sea of troubles, hmmm? And just look what happens, every single time..."

The blood was slowly seeping past Tarrant's fingers and soaking into the fabric of his collar. It was beginning to hurt, a grinding, dizzy sort of ache that Tarrant could feel in his neck and his fingers and the backs of his knees.

"I don't suppose you could possibly help me with this?" Tarrant asked the Bad Idea.

"Not unless you want me to make it worse," said the Idea sardonically. "First aid is hardly my forte. Though you would be surprised at how many people try, at one point or another. Especially the poison eaters," the Idea added with a wistful look.

Turning away from this most disagreeable Idea, Tarrant untied his bedraggled cravat and held it over the cut, pressing on it firmly with both hands. Though obviously he'd been lucky enough to avoid severing his own throat, Tarrant had the notion that examining the cut in detail would only serve to make him queasy. He had never been very good around blood, even before what had happened in Salazen Grum.

Tarrant looked over at Alice, still sleeping near the far wall like some child's crumpled-up doll. Nothing for it. As little as he wanted to involve Alice in matters concerning the Bad Idea, he wanted to bleed to death even less.

"Alice," he croaked, sloshing through the water towards her. "Alice!"

Alice bolted upright at the sound of her name, eyes widening a little as she took in his haggard appearance. "Tarrant, what's wrong?" she asked him as she got to her feet. Then she caught sight of his hands pressed against his collarbone and she stood on tiptoe, one hand on his shoulder, trying to see better in the odd light. Alice made a distressing noise much like a squeak, and Tarrant figured that meant she had noticed the blood.

"Tarrant, what happened?"

"It was a Bad Idea -"

"I dare say it was," Alice said, pulling on his arm to get him to sit down. Then a moment later, "Tarrant, you don't mean to say you did this to _yourself_?"

At her horrified voice, every word in the paddock bolted. Tarrant made a grab for one as it passed and pulled it roughly back into place. It hissed at him, flattening its long ears against its head.

"I don't know," he snapped, dropping heavily to his knees and letting the remaining words scatter. He hadn't _meant_ to actually - at least, not just then. Not ever, the hatter corrected himself firmly. I am not listening to any Bad Ideas.

Although, it wasn't as though he had an infinite supply of Ideas to work with - Good, Bad, or otherwise.

Alice shied away from him for a moment (much like the words had done, he thought), then bit her lip and quite unexpectedly pulled a length of white ribbon from the pocket of her dress. Alice spent some minutes fussing with the ribbon, the blood-soaked remnants of the cravat, and a pair of passably clean handkerchiefs that Tarrant had tucked in his waistcoat. Tarrant held very still while she worked, alternatively watching Alice and keeping an eye on the Bad Idea, who was sitting cross-legged on top of the water (a talent the hatter found very enviable) and rubbing absently at a spot on one of its shoes.

He held very still while she worked, waiting for the words to creep back to him. Alice kept darting him quick little looks, meeting his eye in odd moments when she wasn't entirely concentrating on his throat. Tarrant was trying not to think about the fact that he had frightened Alice - frightened her badly, judging by the abnormally pale color of her face. Not thinking about it was a difficult task, rather like trying to not think about elephants.

Eventually, Alice stopped fiddling with the bits of cloth and her hands crept back to bury themselves in the folds of her dress.

"Does it hurt very much?" Alice asked, and there were no fireflies in her voice at all. Gingerly, Tarrant shook his head, trying to unsettle the bandaging as little as possible. Alice managed a wan smile and some bit of Tarrant's insides untwisted marginally to see that she wasn't angry with him, not really, for getting into an argument with a Bad Idea. Bashfully, the words began to creep back into their paddock.

"Is it very bad?" he asked.

"I rather think you'll live," said Alice in a muchier voice. But she wasn't meeting his eye, and still fiddling with the damp folds of her dress. Questions again, thought Tarrant, and for once in his life, Tarrant thought he might not enjoy answering them.

"But Tarrant, you must promise me something," she blurted out in a rush. "You must promise me not to _ever_ do this again. Can you do that, Tarrant?" She looked at him solemnly and for a moment he was forcibly reminded of the White Queen - sorrowful, intense and so very pale.

"I promise," Tarrant said. No more picking fights with Bad Ideas. He'd already found out that it didn't work. The he added, just to make sure she knew, "I knew it was a Bad Idea."

"A terrible idea," agreed Alice vehemently. She snuffled once, making Tarrant almost regret that he hadn't held on to one of those handkerchiefs.

From one of the darker corners of the room, the Bad Idea shot a withering glance at the girl and then harumped its way further into the background. Tarrant had half-expected Alice to comment on the Bad Idea before this, although he supposed that she must not be able to see it very well, given that the Idea wasn't actually hers. As far as Tarrant was concerned, that was all well and good. He didn't want Alice to be in any way sensible of the Bad Idea (or any of its implications) until he had a chance to think through what he was going to do - without the Bad Idea making all sorts of horrible suggestions.

"Tarrant, may I ask you something?" Alice tentatively began. "And you don't have to answer if you don't want to," she added, giving Tarrant a very clear indication that no, he probably would not want to answer whatever question she was about to trouble the waters with.

Reluctantly, he nodded.

"What, exactly,were you trying to do, with the knife?"

A handful of the words made a halfhearted attempt at organizing themselves, before lying down in disgust at the attempt to explain Tarrant's reluctant acquaintance with a very, very Bad Idea. Tarrant scrambled to his feet and stepped quickly away, sloshing a few feet further into the water, considering wet feet an acceptable tradeoff for the ability to rest his head against the cool stone of the arching walls.

Behind him, he heard Alice get to her feet, but she did not immediately follow him. Instead he heard her splashing her way deeper into the water. She was going back over to the door. Well, of course she was. It was all either one of them had been doing for the past three days. That was good, he thought, sternly telling himself that he was not disappointed that she hadn't followed him. Not disappointed in the least. That's fine, that's absolutely all right, perhaps she'll find something we've missed, for after all she is absolutely Alice, she makes her own way, even down the most dangerous of roads.

But Tarrant harbored a depressing sort of certainty that he had already solved the puzzle of the door. What he had not yet figured out was the problem of getting both of them out alive. If there even _was_ a solution that would get them both out alive...

"The time has come, the mushroom said, to talk of desperate deeds,'" the Bad Idea declaimed with enthusiasm from its corner of the room. "Of rope, and knives, and burning pyres; of dainty throats that bleed."

_ Go away_, Tarrant mouthed to the Idea, glaring at it. The Idea grinned broadly and slowly vanished, its yellowish teeth lingering on for several seconds after the rest of the wretched creature had disappeared.

"Tarrant, look at this," Alice said in an odd voice.

The hatter looked over to see Alice standing in front of the door, holding the knife in one hand and staring at the blade with a startled expression. A shiver of alarm ran up the hatter's spine at the sight of the blade. When had the knife been put back up on its holder? Perhaps the Bad Idea had done it, although to Tarrant's knowledge it wasn't really in the nature of Ideas to interact directly with physical objects.

As Tarrant pondered that, he saw a drop of liquid slowly roll off the tip of the knife blade, but instead of falling to the water below it, as any normal droplet would wish to do, it flicked sideways through the air to vanish into the ironbound frame of the door. Tarrant's eyes widened and he recalled the White Queen's voice in the tower room at Mamoreal.

_ Blood, freely spilled or forcibly taken, is one of the most powerful ingredients of all_. _Indeed, there is no more precious thing in all of Underland_.

Tarrant wondered if his blood on the blade (for that must be what it was, and the notion made Tarrant feel a touch unwell) counted as 'forcibly taken'. Or perhaps it was 'freely spilled'. It was all rather confusing. Another drop rolled off the blade and was pulled into the door. Whichever it was, the door seeped to be lapping it up. Hungrily.

Alice was watching the vampirish antics of the door with a sharp look on her face. She held the blade closer to the door's opaque surface, then cautiously touched the point of the blade to the wood. Even from the other side of the room, Tarrant could see a pale shimmer of energy dancing across the dark surface.

"It seems to like that," Tarrant offered.

"Yes," agreed Alice. And she added in an altogether different voice. "I wonder..."

With no further warning than that, Alice flipped the knife around, raised her left hand and drew a small cut directly across it, pressing the welling palm into the thirsty surface of the door. (Tarrant was very glad he was still leaning against the wall.) The door reacted immediately, a hand print of white light coalescing within the wood under Alice's touch. Quick to press her advantage, Alice grabbed at the door's handle and shook it fiercely, but although he could see her small arms straining with effort, the door didn't budge even so much as one inch.

If Alice herself was dismayed, she didn't show it. She returned her left hand to the door, moving it curiously about the wood, watching as the hand print of light copied her motions. Her right hand, still holding the knife, came to rest on her hip in a particularly Alice-like posture.

"Alice?" Tarrant called.

"I wonder what it thinks it's doing," said Alice. "Or maybe the real question is, what does _it _think _I'm _doing?" She looked at the door intently, then her gaze flicked to the impossible placard with its equally impossible phrase.

Without warning, the Bad Idea flickered into being right beside Alice. She didn't see it; it pulled back a lock of her hair; bent to her ear as if it were whispering; she cocked her head as if she had heard.

"_Alice_!" Tarrant screamed, splashing pell-mell through the water in a panic. She couldn't listen to that Idea, couldn't even know that it existed, because what if _she_ followed its advice instead of him, she was such a clever girl, she would work it out eventually. She couldn't be allowed to guess what he had guessed; what he thought he knew (so confusing to explain) was true.

A sudden image, a memory rather, flashed across his eyes in the space of a heartbeat. Alice, in the Champion's armor, holding the Vorpal sword before her, resolute and so very, very frightened. She had made impossible choices before. She had faced the Jabberwock, even though she did not believe herself capable of defeating it. She had made choices before that might bring about her death. She had made such choices before. She might make them again.

Not this time, Alice.

Alice had spun around at Tarrant's cry, breaking her momentary contact with the door. He grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her roughly against him and shooting a withering glare at the Bad Idea who, characteristically, refused to wither even the slightest bit. Alice meanwhile, had pushed back against Tarrant's chest and was fixing the hatter with her own sort of withering glare which seemed to be much more effective than Tarrant's. Of course, Alice was also still holding the knife, so the effect on Tarrant was rather more pronounced than it might otherwise have been.

"Tarrant, what on earth -"

Greatly daring, Tarrant snatched the knife out of Alice's hand. Not knowing what else to do, he threw the horrid thing at the Bad Idea as hard as he could.

"Get away from her!" he shouted as the Idea ducked, and the knife slammed into the far wall. "You have no business with her."

"Hatter, there's no one there -"

"She's not yours, you have no right -"

"_Hatter_ -"

"Tarrant," the Bad Idea called, and Tarrant placed one shaking finger over Alice's protesting lips. Alice fell silent immediately, worried eyes searching his face.

"I'm listening," said the hatter. Alice opened her mouth; Tarrant shushed her before she could speak a word, looking uneasily back at the Bad Idea. It was leaning against the frame of the locked door, running its fingers absently over the wood.

"Right now you still have a choice, Tarrant," the Idea said. "You're the only one who knows. But she _will_ figure it out, sooner or later. What will you do then?"

_I don't know_, Tarrant thought angrily, turning away from the Idea. All I am asking for is a moment's peace to try and figure that out. But the Idea was not quite finished speaking.

"Oh, Tarrant?" The hatter raised his head, but did not turn back around. _I'm listening. Say what you will and be done with it_.

"What do you think _she_ will do?"

Tarrant had no answer to that. Shaking his head, he took Alice by the elbow and led her, drug her almost, back towards the one marginally dry spot in the room.

"Tarrant, would you please tell me what on earth is going on?" demanded Alice, as soon as they had reached what the two of them had begun to consider 'their' flagstone.

"You don't want to know," said Tarrant, surprised at how wretched his voice sounded, even to him.

"Oh, don't I?" she replied, shrugging off his arm. "Then why are you asking me to ignore the one thing that damned door has done since we've been here?" She was grabbing his arm with both hands, almost shaking it, fingers tight against his shirtsleeve. So thin, her fingers were, matching the hollows under her eyes, the pale, almost translucent look of her skin. "We will _die_ here if we don't figure it out, don't you understand that?"

"I know it, my dear," he whispered softly. She froze at his words, going so still under his hands that the hatter immediately regretted not lying to her. Tarrant could hear the hitch in her breath, when she looked up, he could see twin lines of tears across her cheeks.

"You're taking to empty rooms, Hatter; you're jumping at shadows. Your throat..." Whatever it was she was about to say, the girl let drop. "You scare me to death," she murmured, and put a hand to the odd mark on her cheek, the one that looked almost like a bruise.

"Alice." And said it again, waiting until she looked at him. "Alice, I know it. And I'm sorry."_ More sorry than you know, Alice. _ "This place is no good for either of us." He took her hand, waiting until she met his eye. "What it wants from us, Alice, might not be something we can give."

She was shaking her head, fierce even through her tears. "Don't you _dare_ give up, Tarrant. Don't you dare, _I _won't, I'm not ever giving up -"

"Alice," he said, as tenderly as he could. "I would never ask you to. But just for now, just for this moment - let it go. Just for a little while. Sit with me, and let it go."

"All right," she whispered. "For a little while. If you want." Slowly, they slid to the floor and Tarrant could smell, faintly, the flower scent of her hair - warm, lovely blossoms he could not put a name to. Her hands were wrapped under his coat; he could feel her palms warm against his back.

"I'm sorry I frightened you," Tarrant said, and felt Alice shaking her head where she had buried it against his shoulder.

"Don't be," she said, and swallowed thickly. "It's only that it will be harder, the longer we're here. Things are falling to bits, Tarrant. You told me, on the boat, that we ought to be very careful what we let in. Very soon, we won't be able to choose. Things are coming, whether we want them or not."

Despair, fear and pain - already staring them in the face. Waiting for the moment they could slip through the widening cracks.

"All of the bad things," Tarrant said softly. "We shall have to let them in, sooner or later." With a sigh, the hatter dropped his head into his hands; was stopped by Alice's bare hand against his cheek.

"I know it's coming, Hatter. Every bad thing in the world, and we haven't a choice about it at all. But we still have a little time, don't we? Before everything goes to pieces?"

Running one hand through her yellow hair, Tarrant slowly dipped his head to Alice's own. "I hope so, Alice."

"What's the first thing you would do, if you were back in Underland?" Always a question; Tarrant couldn't help but smile.

"I would take you back to the windmill and cook the biggest stack of hotcakes that you have ever seen. We would both eat ourselves silly and not move for a week."

"It wouldn't be a stack at all - I would eat them all the moment you took them off the griddle." The smile was back in her voice - tentative, perhaps, but it was there, all the same.

"I can see you would make a merciless house guest. I suppose I would send you to Mamoreal and let Thackeray have the joy of feeding you."

"I would come right back to the windmill with pea soup dripping from my nose." The fireflies were in her eyes, bright and glowing and Tarrant wanted to capture them if it were the last thing he ever did. Nurture and cherish them, warm himself in their glow until the very last lights went out.

"You would look ridiculous and I would let you in."

"I would like that." She licked her lips and her fingers were wrapped in his hair.

"I would like that too," he murmured. "It's spring there, Alice. We could plant flowers in the garden."

"I would stay to see them blossom, and they would be blue. Lupine and forget-me-nots."

"We would scatter the soil over them in the fall and plant them again in the spring," he told her. He could feel her breath in little puffs against his cheek

"How would you ask me to marry you?"

The question staggered him, like ripples in some deep still pool, and what sort of game were they playing, now? "I would ask the butterflies to write it in the sky for you. You would say yes and I would probably cry."

"You're crying now, please don't -"

"Hush," he said, laying a finger against her lips. She was crying as well, Tarrant could see the drops standing in her eyes. "It's my turn for a question. What dress would you wear to the wedding?"

"Yours, of course," she said, with a shove to his ribs. "As if you didn't know. You would sew it out of silk and pearls and Mirana would give me away. Do we have children?"

"Dozens," he said. "And every one of them has your hair. And when they're grown?"

"We grow old and crotchety and quarrelsome and we are so happy that we hardly remember there ever was a time that we were cold or frightened or hungry -"

"Hush, Alice," he said again, for the tears were on her cheeks and her dress was slipping off of her shoulders. He pulled the sodden fabric closer about her neck, but she shrugged off his hand. A quick motion at the back of her neck, and the linen slid away, dropping into her lap. So thin, was Tarrant's first startled thought. Porcelain skin, the veins in her arms standing out like lines of ink. Shivering, and dear God, so was he. Perfect and lovely and fading; as though she might fall to pieces at any moment. Beautiful and fragile and wondrous.

"Hatter?"

Her skin was prickling in the cold, but the heat in her eyes was like nothing Tarrant had ever seen. Possessive, and defiant and frightened. Certain as sunrise and just as full of promise. Tarrant swallowed heavily before the words would come. "Yes, Alice?"

"Hatter, how do we die?" she whispered.

"When we are very old, and very tired, and entirely ready to go. The nightingales sing one night and we walk out into the dark."

"And then what happens?"

"Starlight, Alice. Ages and ages of starlight."

"Starlight," she repeated. "It doesn't sound so bad."

"It won't be, my love. Alice, are you sure -"

"Yes," she said, and if her voice was a bit unsteady, her hand on his face was firm, and the touch was like fire. Carefully, she put her other hand to his chest, rubbing down his stomach as though she were petting a cat. "Kiss me, Tarrant."

Tarrant did so, as if she were the last sweet thing he would ever taste.

* * *

They were lying in the one dry spot in the room, Tarrant having laid his coat across the floor like a rug to ameliorate the chill of the stones. Alice's hand had (eventually) been tied up in a neat (and, she had protested, entirely unnecessary) bandage of stockings and hat ribbon. They were lying very close, as the coat was not very large; Tarrant expected he ought to be very happy with this state of affairs, however it seemed impossible to feel happy, or delighted, or even moderately pleased in light of the fact that he was likely looking at Alice for the very last time.

She was asleep, Tarrant noticed absently, breathing heavily into the fabric of his waistcoat. Her skin felt warm; _he_ felt warm, almost. Or as close to warm as he was ever likely to get, down here. Wherever here was, anyway. Tarrant's head was starting to hurt again, a tremulous feeling behind his eyes that told him that standing up was likely to be difficult task to accomplish. He had been reckless with his strength, Tarrant knew. What they had conjured between them had not been entirely without cost; the hatter felt more tired that he would have thought possible. But there had been starlight, just for a moment, and that was good enough for him.

The hatter tried to close his eyes, to follow Alice into whatever passages her sleeping mind was wandering, but there always seemed to be something moving in the corner of his eye. Sometimes it was Alice herself, and sometimes Tarrant would jump awake with a start, convinced that the terrible, black-suited Idea was standing over him. Sometimes, it was a yellow-haired girl, looking at him with those fey, familiar eyes.

That was _one_ dream, Tarrant was sure, that would never actually happen. Not anymore. So many beautiful dreams, and no time for any of them. No time at all.

Although, if you thought about it, it wasn't entirely impossible. Certain... prerequisites... had been achieved. That was how these things normally progressed, wasn't it? Which meant that it wasn't impossible that she - that Alice was - that Alice _might_ be -

Curiously, wonderingly, Tarrant put a hand to Alice's belly. Smooth and warm through the fabric of her dress. Fragile and alive and brimming with possibility. She might be, Tarrant thought vaguely. It's not entirely out of the question. She might be, but we won't ever know. It could even be a green-eyed girl. I won't ever know for sure. She won't ever know. So strange, that I'm the only one who might suspect. She ought to be the one to tell me. Come up behind me and throw her arms around me and whisper it. Not like this - a question asked in the darkness that won't ever be answered.

It seemed to Tarrant that this was an entirely unacceptable way to go about being a father. A handful of tumbling moments, burning with their own kindled fire, and then what? They had a few more days at most, terrible and beautiful and fragile as crystal. The heat they had held between them was already fading, and Tarrant knew that he would feel worse than ever when it finally vanished into its own embers. Back to the hunger, the aches, the low mewling of the words in their paddock as the snow soaked through their thin fur.

Alice was already dying. So was he, bit by bit. It was just that here they had the leisure of taking their time about it. They were already dying - even the phantom girl - his own impossible, green-eyed daughter. She would live with them and die with them and they would never know. Like some pale ghost, the shadow of something he might see but would never be able to touch.

_ We pick the forget-me-nots. Every spring._

Tarrant knew, very suddenly, what he was going to do, and to hell with what Alice would think about it. She would live, wouldn't she, and that was that main thing. She would live and perhaps, later, she would understand. She wouldn't forgive him immediately, the hatter knew. Quite likely she would hate him for it. Hate him for leaving her alone. For doing this terrible thing he needed to do. But at least she would be alive to do the hating, and that was enough for Tarrant to be satisfied.

Turning back to her, Tarrant laid his hand very gently on the top of her hair. He could see the light in her, shining through her skin as though it were paper. Her soul, Tarrant thought, shining through until the moment it breaks through its wrapping entirely. And goes away to wherever souls go when they have decided they've no further use for a body. He might wake her, Tarrant thought. He might try to explain himself, while he was still able to do so. But he didn't think she would listen. She would not understand. If she cared for him, as her body and her promises had lead him to believe she did, the she would not _let_ herself understand.

Or worse, she might agree. Tarrant pictured Alice saying to him very seriously - _Yes. It ought to be you, and not me. Go ahead. Do this_. She would be quite right, of course, but Tarrant did not want to hear her say it. Or, God, if she _watched_ - Better to think of... not Alice's next few days, no, or even her next few months, but _someday_. Years from now, when Alice might sit on the edge of a young girl's bed and say, let me tell you about a man I used to know, who did a very brave thing once upon a time.

Impulsively, Tarrant leaned over and kissed her, feather-light, on her cheek. Alice's eyelashes fluttered and the hatter froze, hoping and dreading that she might wake.

"You must tell her," he murmured, so low he could barely hear his own voice. "All of our stories; sing her all the lullabies. I would help you if I could. I would slay all of your dragons for you." His voice broke. Swallowing heavily, he forced out the rest.

"It turns out I have to slay something else, Alice. I'm sorry. There isn't another way."

Not enough time. Not ever enough time.

Tears wet on his cheeks, Tarrant rolled away from the girl. The cold on his skin as he pulled away was almost a ache, mingling with the sharp stab of grief in his heart. Tarrant stumbled into the water, feeling the cold bite into his legs with more ferocity than he remembered from before. His stomach hurt, and he was beginning to feel a certain unsteadiness on his feet, a vague tightness behind his eyes. Everything's going to pieces, the green-eyed girl had told him. Me, and Alice, and everything. He was dying, this very moment, no matter what he did or did not do, and his dreams and his lover would die along with him -

"The key to your dreams lies in your heart," he whispered for what must be the thousandth time.

Unaccountably, the knife was back on its hook, the metal of the blade winking at him in the odd light of the room.

"Bloodthirsty creature," he muttered at the door. "Why must it be there of all places? I'd much rather give up a hand, or a nose, but a heart? You don't find a worthwhile heart every day, you know. It simply seems to me," the hatter finished quietly, "a rather excessive penalty."

"It sounds like someone has finally made up his mind," drawled the Bad Idea. The Idea was sitting on top of the water again, eyeing Tarrant with evident interest.

"Will you stay?" asked Tarrant, not even bothering to answer so evident a question. "It's only that I, well, I'd rather not..."

"Ye-es?"

"Do this alone," Tarrant finished.

The Bad Idea rubbed at its balding head and had the good grace to look abashed.

"I'm hardly going to run off now that you've finally decided to do something interesting," the Idea said. "That would be missing the entire point. And I'm sure you'll manage splendidly, regardless," it added, in a tone that was evidently meant to be comforting.

Tarrant gave the Idea an unreadable look. "I'm not like your others, you know," he said quietly. "I can tell a hawk from a handsaw perfectly well; I am not putting on any sort of antic disposition, and I _very_ much doubt you are an honest ghost."

"Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin," agreed the Bad Idea happily. "But what is a body to do, after all?" The Idea was back to making that infernal humming noise in the back of its throat. A horrid sound it was, but Tarrant could not quite muster the energy even to feel bothered by it. Too many horrid things had come and gone in the past few days - if he let himself be bothered by all of them he would probably go mad. Or perhaps he had already -

"Did _you_ put the knife back on its placard?" Tarrant asked it suddenly.

"Hardly," replied the Idea. "You try to stab me with it, you throw it at me, and now you're accusing me of rearranging the furnishings. Manners these days... And I rather imagine _it_ did." The Idea flipped one hand absently towards the door. "It wants this, you know. Almost as much as you do."

"I don't want _this_," said Tarrant with a dark look. "I want to save her." The words were coming slowly, as if they had been waiting a long time for him notice them. "If Alice is happy, then everything is all right. She can have her dreams, even if they aren't mine. She can be happy, even if it isn't with me. She can have what _she_ wants, even if it isn't what_ I_ want. She can live, even if I -"

In two steps, Tarrant was before the door, snatching the knife down from its placard in one savage motion, cradling it almost protectively against his chest. He was gripping the handle almost painfully tight, feeling the cold-iron gleam of the metal, the raised edges of the crosspiece. The hatter looked back at Alice almost desperately - she might wake, and that would be a very awkward conversation, wouldn't it, but at least they would be talking. Dear God, he would miss her. No - he would never miss her, or anything else, ever again. Tarrant shut his eyes against a sudden wave of vertigo. There was ice about him, a cold, blinding fear, and the snow was falling again, somewhere behind his eyes. He could feel the latticework of cracks surrounding him, tiny fissures in the ice - one tiny step and he would disappear into it without so much as a whisper.

Somewhere, Tarrant could hear the Bad Idea chuckling to itself.

Tarrant forced his eyes open, and there it was; the horrible, misshapen creature seemed to be the only thing he could see clearly, the snow was so thick and he was so cold. The Bad Idea was grinning broadly, its yellowish teeth long and hungry in its face.

"Give me a moment," Tarrant told it quietly. "There's one more thing I need to do."

The poor words were huddled miserably in their paddock, their backs to the wind, bits of ice clinging to their manes. Mechanically, Tarrant walked out among them, here and there touching the frost-covered backs of his favorites, rubbing across their noses, or under their chins. _Peppermint. Cross-stitch. Violet. _There was no comfort for him in their eyes, only the false, vacant serenity of creatures that have decided that there is simply nothing more to be done. Slowly, Tarrant walked to the gate of the paddock, undid the lock, and pushed at the bars. Noiselessly, the gate swung forward on its hinges, snow billowing about it as it opened. As Tarrant stepped back, one of the words wearily drug itself to its feet and staggered towards the gate. In moments, it had disappeared into the whiteness. One by one, the others fell into step behind it. Heads held low, the words shuffled past, dragging their long tails in feathery tracks through the snow.

One word stayed, long past the others. Yellow hair, curling past its shoulders, blue eyes staring at him. Restlessly, it stamped the ground, shifting back and forth uneasily. Tarrant made a shooing motion; the Alice-word dropped its head and snorted, looking uneasily between Tarrant and the open gate.

He wanted to tell her - I am doing this for you, you know. You needn't look so ungrateful. You needn't look so sad. But the words to properly express such things were already gone, their hoofprints filling fast behind them, as though they had never existed. Eventually, the Alice-word turned on its heel and walked away, head bowed. It disappeared into the frozen emptiness in moments, following doggedly after the others.

But the snow was falling faster, and Tarrant did not think any of them would find their way.

Tarrant turned away from the paddock gate, wrenching himself back to the outside world. The snow was so thick about him; Tarrant could hardly tell whether he had made it back or not. Oh, yes, I have - there is a knife in my hand and I am about to use it. The tipping point was close, Tarrant could feel it; that shattering instant when an Idea was about to become a Deed. But it seemed a moment later that he must have been mistaken; it wasn't a Deed, it was a Choice. It was a Choice for Alice and he would make it especially for her. And because it was for her, Tarrant knew that he could embrace each and every consequence .

Tarrant settled the point of the knife more firmly over his ribcage and slowly exhaled. He was going to try very hard not to scream. It would be so much easier for Alice that way.

The Bad Idea knelt beside him, one warty hand covering his own. The festering hand was solid, and cold; Tarrant's own hand was shaking, as though the knife he grasped was the heaviest thing he would ever hold.

"Now," the Idea said in a kind voice. "Let me show you how this is done."

Tarrant looked back only once. She was wrapped in his own waistcoat, pale hair beginning to curl with the damp, chest rising and falling with her breath. She was sleeping, and he loved her, and she wasn't going to wake. Or rather, she would wake and she would open the door and he would give her all of her dreams. She would live. His impossible daughter would live. If she even existed at all. Tarrant felt the point of the knife beginning to dimple his skin through the thin shirt.

"Nymph, in thy orisons" Tarrant whispered as he felt the blade begin to sting, "Be all my love remembered -"

* * *

Not screaming turned out to be much harder than he thought it would be.

* * *

_Puffin's Note - No one dies for real in Star Trek. There are still two chapters more to come, though I hesitate to say when I will next have time to work on this. And though I'm almost afraid to say it, let me know what you think? _

_Credit where credit is due: The doggerel that the Bad Idea taunts Tarrant with is a butchered version of the Lewis Carroll poem 'The Walrus and the Carpenter', found in Alice Through the Looking-Glass._

_The hawks, handsaws, noble minds, antic dispositions, honest ghosts, seas of troubles, blossoms of sin, and nymphs' orisons are all references to Hamlet - one of the greatest meditations on madness and the contemplation of Bad Ideas ever to be written. _


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

_Puffin's Note - Thrilled with all of the reviews, especially the people who enjoyed the Bad Idea, which was ridiculously fun to write. (If this were a movie, he would be played by Rowan Aikinson.)_

_Also, I had *no idea* that this chapter would take so long to write. Many apologies... For one thing, Alice's point of view is harder, which is a shame, since we're done with the Tarrant-narrated bits. Tarrant, as I write him, is a world-class optimist and I quite enjoy sharing his head. For another, the opening dream scene used to be four pages long (instead of four paragraphs) and the whole thing was terribly hard to write and terribly boring and pointless to read. So it's been axed. Yay for edits!_

_

* * *

_

"I don't believe this for a moment," said Alice

She was standing in her father's study, in the big old house on the outskirts of London. The furnishings she knew intimately, having played in this room since she was a little girl. The heavy oaken desk with pictures of sailing ships carved into the frontspiece, the overstuffed chairs with knobby wooden handles, the oriental rug, the Chinese vases displayed prominently on the side table just to the left of the door.

"What's not to believe?" asked Charles Kingsleigh, looking up from the stack of papers that had been previously occupying his attention. "That hardly sounds like the Alice I remember. You've not been keeping in practice; are there so few impossible things to believe in nowadays?"

"People do not come back from the dead," said Alice. "There are impossible things, and then there are _impossible_ things."

"Then we appear to be at an impasse," said Tarrant from behind her. The hatter was lounging in the doorway, and in the curious way of dreams, he looked entirely at home in the Kingsleigh's study, as though it did not matter one jot that he was inhabiting the wrong world altogether. "Is that not what I am doing right now?"

"You aren't dead, you goose," Alice said affectionately. She lifted the top hat from off his head and gently poked him in the chest with it. "Merely incurably silly."

"Is that what it is?" said Tarrant, grinning at her. "My mistake, I'm sure. Now give me that hat, Alice, you'll bend the brim."

Alice placed the hat back onto his head, planting a kiss on the tip of his nose as she did so. From there, the dream progressed quickly to other places and other things, in the usual manner of dreams. When Alice awoke, she remembered hardly any of it at all.

* * *

Three things had changed in the locked room since Alice had fallen asleep, but Alice did not immediately notice any of them.

It was the light that woke her to begin with. She didn't quite know why she had chosen to open her eyes, but open they were, and she woke to find herself staring at the impossible door. Or rather, at the water directly in front of the door, which was rippling back and forth in the most mesmerizing way, like little waves of light brushing against the wood. There was a faint glow coming from the door where the water was lapping at it; Alice thought it a rather beautiful effect. She found that she did not wish to look away; Alice was somehow certain that the rest of the room would be rather less enjoyable to contemplate. There would be walls, and looming, stone ceilings, and water everywhere, and it seemed to Alice that her dress was quite damp. And cold; don't think about why. And there would be a floating placard, with a knife, and a phrase that Alice emphatically did not want to think about. _The key to your dreams is -_ Firmly, Alice pushed the nagging thoughts away. It was so much easier to simply admire the light playing across the door than to think about all of the other things that needed thinking about. Alice was not sure what they were, these terribly important things, but she was convinced she would be happier if she continued to not quite remember what they were. Better to just watch the light - it really is quite beautiful, Tarrant would appreciate it. Ought I to wake him? Perhaps I should just let him sleep...

The door was doing something like this before, Alice vaguely remembered. She'd cut her palm - it had hurt; she definitely remembered that much. The light had followed her hand across the door like a shadow, as though there was something about the blood... And then Tarrant had gotten very upset, and he'd been shouting at something Alice couldn't see, and they'd both gotten angry and... Well, suffice it to say, they hadn't stayed angry very long.

Tarrant's waistcoat was still here, Alice noticed, wrapped about her shoulders. Stupid, chivalrous thing to do, giving it to her; he'd be cold without it.

"Tarrant?" she called absently, still blankly watching the door. It was still rippling, the faint patterns of light crisscrossing and blending with the dark grain of the wood. The door seemed to be becoming more active they longer they stayed down here; was that a good sign? But before, it had reacted to blood, to the stain on her hand. It had reacted to the _blood_. Now it was reacting to the _water_ in just the same fashion, as though there were something in the water, as though there were -

Alice tore her eyes away from the door, her heart hammering unaccountably fast. It was then that Alice finally realized that something in the room had changed. There was something new; something new in a room where nothing ever changed, where nothing, Alice was beginning to believe, ever _could_ change. The impossible, new thing was subtle; small and bottle-green, and dangling from the plaque just below the knife and the impossible phrase that accompanied it. _ The key to your dreams..._ Alice was on her feet in an instant, splashing through the water to look at it more closely. It was unmistakably a key - as large as her hand, long and curlicued, and the most vivid hue of emerald Alice had ever seen. A key - and God, how they had hoped for one - its presence as impossible as it was real, and Alice felt hope lifting in her heart for the first time in many days.

"Tarrant?" she called again, louder this time. She wanted him to see it, before she tried to pick it up. Were it only Alice who saw it, she might very well be imagining things, but if Tarrant saw it too, then it had to be real. It would mean they had a way out; it would mean they had won. It would mean they got to live, and not vanish into nothing in the twilight eternity of the locked room.

It was then that Alice realized that they key was not the only thing in the room that had changed. Beside the key, the knife was hanging, as it always had done, but there was something on the blade. Something (dear God) dark and viscous (the blood on her hand, and the door had lapped at it like cream) dripping into the water beneath.

Alice was suddenly, heartbreakingly aware that no one had answered her when she had called the hatter's name.

"Tarrant!" she screamed, eyes frantically searching the drowned room, finding the third thing that had changed: a still, pale shape lying beneath the water scarcely a dozen feet away.

* * *

She is sitting with him in the water because she can't drag him all the way out and she doesn't want to leave him alone. His face is still beneath the surface, lying only an inch or two deep, the rippling water seems to cloud his features. Or perhaps it is only Alice's eyes that are cloudy; they are tearing and red, she can hardly see anything clearly at all. _His_ eyes are as clear and green as ever, even under the water, and Alice wonders if perhaps she should shut them. But he would want to be able to look at her, Alice thinks, and it seems cruel to leave him alone in the dark. She can't quite see what his expression is, and she thinks perhaps it is better that she can't. The water helps to hide the jagged hole carved in his chest, but it has not washed away all of the blood. Even in the odd light of the room, she can see the different colors and patterns of it - bright to dull red, fading to brown. She doesn't want to look at it and it is impossible to ignore.

The pieces come together slowly, a horrified sort of understanding taking root as Alice slowly comes to grips with what Tarrant must already have known. Keys, and hearts, and knives. Doors that cannot be opened by any other mechanism. Where the key must have come from,and what it must have cost Tarrant to get it. He gave me a way out, Alice thinks, even when he knew he didn't have one for himself. Had it all worked out, didn't he? Except for the part about what I am supposed to do now that he's gone.

He was alone when he did this, Alice thinks. Or as good as alone. I was here, but I didn't do him very much good, did I? He could have told me. He might have said, and we would have found another way. He didn't have to do this.

He didn't say goodbye.

Alice wants the opium, a craving that has not touched her in months and suddenly it is all that she can think of. Any means to forget; any way to shroud the past few days and minutes in the oblivion of the drug. She'll take it. She has taken it before. After what happened in the harbor and it had worked then. Eventually. Just get on with things, they had told her, and eventually it will be better. That is what they told Alice when her father died; that was Lord Ascott's advice during the worst of the time in Canton. That, thinks Alice, is what people always tell her. Get on with things, and it will be better. Alice already knows that it is a lie.

Alice knows that if you get on with things, you forget enough of the really horrible bits that it seems as if things get better. But they don't. People who are dead never come back and things that are broken are never mended. Things don't get better; though sometimes they get tolerable.

They say that if one pretends that things are tolerable, then eventually, the lie will become true. Alice knows differently. All that will happen is that one becomes very practiced at lying.

Mirana shouldn't know that it happened like this, Alice thinks suddenly. Nor Thackeray, or Mally. If I go back to Underland, I will have to tell them. Better that they don't know; better if they can't even guess. Better they think he went away one day and just didn't come back. She could still do that, herself. Go back to Canton,dive into her work again. It was what she had done before, after what had happened in the harbor. Get on with things. Play along with the old lie.

(She is holding his hand; she doesn't remember when she picked it up. It doesn't feel like him anymore.)

They would have planted the forget-me-nots, Alice thinks suddenly. He would have done everything he'd said and more. Flowers, and hot cakes and a white dress made out of silk especially for her.

But don't think about that. Not yet, and maybe not ever. Put it aside, like you do the bad things. You'll see him again in your nightmares, you can count on that, and he will look just like he does now. Alice wonders if she will ever be able to remember him any other way. Perhaps she would be better not remembering him at all.

She needs to go, Alice knows. She will starve if she stays here, or perhaps she'll just go mad. She doesn't want to leave him, except that leaving him means that she can start to forget him. Take everything about the past days and lock it away. Get on with her own proper business of surviving. It's what he would have wanted, she thinks. Its the only choice he's left me, after all.

Her hand is still holding tightly to his own, and Alice gently pulls it out of the water. She thinks that perhaps she might kiss it, one last forgotten gesture before she goes, but when their joined hands come free of the water, the sight is all wrong. There is a heaviness to his hand that never was there before, and the skin is too pale; white and stiffening and already cold. The inclination dies, flickering out like a candle, and Alice lets go the fingers. Rippling, they slip beneath the water and are still.

She stands up then, and walking away wasn't as hard as she had expected it to be. Perhaps it is because he hardly looks like Tarrant anymore. Perhaps it is because she hadn't kissed him. Perhaps she is beginning to forget already. It certainly seems to Alice as though things are already slipping away. Like the memory of sunlight, or the color of grass. All of those things seem to belong to some other Alice, who had never fallen down a rabbit hole, or sailed to Canton, or seen a friend lying the way Tarrant does now. But she isn't that other Alice, even though maybe she wants to be. She does not want to be here, and she stumbles towards the plaque with the terrible, impossible, bottle-green key. The water tugs at her dress and it is harder to order her muscles to walk through than it ought to be. It seems colder here in the shadow of the impossible door, and her legs are trembling, even from such a short walk. Had it been another day or two later, Alice thinks, she might not have been able to stand.

She looks back once, and she can see the outline of his face only because she is looking for it. One pale shadow rippling in the water amongst dozens of such shadows. Alice wonders, suddenly, how many others may have died here, in just such a manner. Or how many others may have survived, stumbling their way, gratefully, guiltily, back towards the places from which they had come. _She_ will not go quietly, Alice decides. She won't meekly accept it; she won't slink away. She shan't feel guilty, either; none of this was _her_ doing. She didn't set up any of these hateful, murderous puzzles.

"He was a good man," Alice hisses at the door. "You say you grant wishes, but everything you showed me were lies. My father is never coming back. _He_ is never coming back. I don't know what you promised him, and I don't care. It wasn't worth this." Alice stares fiercely at the door, almost as though she expects it to respond. But of course, the door had only ever responded to one thing only, and it continues to silently lap at the blood-tinted water as though it were cream.

Her anger seems to make it easier stand, to take the last two steps towards the plaque, and its tiny, shimmering key. Alice reaches for it, and stops with her hand inches away, turning back to the door with an angry jerk of her head. "I will tear this place apart stone by stone if I have to, but by God, I will make you regret what you've done."

With that, Alice's fingers close around the key and in the same moment, the entire room changes about her.

* * *

Alice noticed the food before anything else. It was laid out on a low table, a round loaf of bread next to a double row of steaming drumsticks. There were olives, tiny and oozing with oil; apples, great round red ones, and heaps and heaps of grapes. Beyond that, there was the sense that the room had changed so much in a few seconds as to be nearly unrecognizable. There were torches along the walls, burning brightly and without the least sign of smoke. Two long benches sat beside the table, low and backless and covered with a thick velvet cloth. The water was gone entirely, the flagstones lining the floor already bone-dry. Her own clothes were dry as well, and clean, bearing no sign of the dirt and grime the past several days had inflicted on them. The hatter's waistcoat, also clean, was still wrapped around her shoulders.

Alice dropped to her knees next to the low table, grabbed a hunk of the bread straight from the loaf and crammed it into her mouth. The bottle-green key was still in her hand; she ate around it, not even bothering to put it down. Chewing ravenously, she tore off another piece even before she had swallowed the first mouthful.

And spun about with a start, nearly knocking over the small bench, desperate to look behind her because she was sure she had seen... Something. Only the faintest impression of some quiet presence, looming behind her, intensely scrutinizing her every movement. But there was nothing there. Only the door, which alone among the fixtures of the changed room, looked much as it always did. Only the odd sense of movement that the torchlight gave to the grain of its wood. Nothing else. No one watching, as Alice had been sure that there had been. As though there had been someone standing just behind her.

There were hotcakes on the table, Alice realized, warm enough that they were still steaming. Hotcakes? Had they been there before? She hadn't noticed them; perhaps she just had not seen - and _he_ had said... Don't think about it, Alice told herself sternly. Swallowing the last of the mouthful of bread, strangely dry in her mouth, she deliberately turned back to the table. Don't think about it. Any of it. You're hungry - just eat.

Alice picked up one of the hotcakes, biting off half of the little delicacy in one voracious mouthful. God, it tasted good. There were berries in them, ripe and sweet. Delicious, and there had never been hotcakes in China, and it had been so long since she had tasted one... Hardly aware that she was doing so, Alice dropped the small key on the table beside her, reaching for another hotcake with both hands.

If the table had been any higher, Alice would never have survived the next few moments. She had an instant to realize that there was something behind her, and then the something slammed into her back, sending both of them struggling into the table, and there was an arm about Alice's neck and the knife was in its hand. Alice was grappling, kicking out blindly and feeling her blows connecting with absolutely no effect and she had let go of the key. She had let go of the key and _it_ had come for her in the very same moment. Face pressed into the wood of the table, Alice reached out blindly, her fingers scrabbling against the bowls and plates and she could already feel hands on her shoulders, arranging the knife into a better position, and please let it be over quickly -

-starlight; please let it be that. _Tarrant_-

The key rolled into her fingers as if drawn by a magnet and Alice whirled back to her attacker. And promptly dropped to the floor in a heap, as he was simply not there anymore. Pushing her hair out of her face, Alice pulled herself to her feet, staring at her erstwhile murderer in astonishment.

Kneeling on the stones several feet away was a man dressed entirely in white, his golden hair falling over his face where he held it pressed to the floor. As Alice gaped at him, he slowly raised his head to look at her. His eyes glinted oddly red in the torchlight, and there was a tiny wreath of metal and twig-like branches woven about the crown of his head. Though his posture suggested that of a supplicant, Alice was suddenly reminded of a tiger, patiently waiting for the proper moment to pounce. Alice gripped the key tightly in both hands, feeling it almost grow warm for a moment. Whoever this man was, Alice had a distinct feeling that he had been trapped in this place for much, much longer than Alice wanted to think about. How _he_ had survived being trapped here, Alice had no idea, and he still hadn't spoken a word.

"I already have a key," Alice said loudly, trying to sound more confident that she actually felt. "I can get us both out of here; you don't need to kill me."

"No, mistress?" the man asked archly, pushing himself up so that he was sitting on his haunches, the motion sending the white tunic he wore flowing across his back in ripples. He wore a heavy iron choker about his neck, and matching bracelets about each wrist.

"Mistress?" echoed Alice. Her left hand was bleeding again, where she had cut it before Tarrant had -(don't think about it) - making the key slippery in her fingers. She held to it tightly with both hands, fearful of losing her grip on it. But the man said nothing, only continued to watch her. His eyes were red, and vividly so, it couldn't be a trick of the light.

"Who are you?" she asked, trying not to sound frightened, but he wasn't meeting her gaze. _What are you_ might, in fact, have been a more pertinent question. The red-eyed creature was watching her hands, where a few scattered drops of blood ran down her wrists, dropping softly onto the flagstones of the impossible room.

"They called me _foris_," he said slowly, and his eyes flicked to follow the drops. A sudden look of hunger spilled into his lean face. "And _portico._ But I believe I prefer _foris_. May I, mistress?"

He pointed at the tiny red stain on the flagstones at Alice's feet with one iron-cuffed hand, the gesture slow and inquiring. Suddenly, Alice could not get away from the blood, and the creature wanting it, fast enough. She nearly fell over the low table as she scurried backwards, putting the bulk of it, insubstantial as it was, between herself and the vampirish creature kneeling on the floor before her. But the creature did not more towards it, merely following her movements with his eyes. "Mistress?" he inquired again in a low, hungry growl.

"Yes, all right, certainly" said Alice hastily, aware that if she didn't give him what he apparently wanted, he might choose a more aggressive way to get at it, no matter that she was still holding the bottle-green key. A key which, apparently, had some degree of influence on him.

The creature crawled a step closer and lowered his head to the stones. Alice was immediately faced with the problem of keeping an eye on what he was doing with out actually _seeing_ what he was doing. She settled for half-turning away, watching him out of the corner of her eye. He was putting his hand to the floor, then raising it to his lips, delicately licking his fingers clean. He stood, more quickly than Alice had expected, and she spun about with a start. She was holding the key before her like a talisman, but Foris, as he had called himself, merely folded his arms into the sleeves of his white tunic. The white fabric was still immaculate, never mind that he had been kneeling in blood a moment earlier. Severely, he looked around the room, taking in the overturned bench, the food now scattered across the low table, and Alice herself, gripping the key before her as though it were a cross and he the worst breed of vampire ever to rise from an unquiet grave.

Heaving a dramatic sigh, the man freed one arm from his sleeves and gestured once. The entire room seemed to waver for a moment - and an instant later the bench was upright, the food on the table laid out even more elaborately than it had been before. Even the air itself seemed warmer, a warmth that seemed to have little to do with the torches bracketing the walls - now joined by a large iron chandelier, candle-covered and dangling from the ceiling above them.

"How did you do that?" Alice asked, a shiver of alarm running across her skin.

"They're your wishes, mistress," said the man casually. "Minor ones, to be sure. Warmth, light, food. A simple exercise to grant them, even if you haven't actually asked for them properly."

"Wishes?" Alice asked.

"Dreams and wishes are my particular specialty," the stranger said smoothly. "Of course, not five minutes ago you were wishing that you could destroy me, piece by piece. Forgive me if I am not as quick to grant that particular favor," the man added with a smirk.

"_Destroy_ you?" said Alice, feeling as though she were in danger of completely losing her place in their odd conversation. "_You_ tried to kill _me_, and I don't even know who you are! We've been here for three days and there are no ways in and no ways out. How did you get here?" They couldn't have missed something. Not after what Tarrant had done. Dear God, had there been something they had both overlooked?

"You may call me Foris," said the stranger, with the faintest trace of a smile. "And I didn't come here. I _am_ here."

"I'm not sure I -," began Alice, but the man was already speaking

"You wanted someone to shout at," said Foris, folding his arms into the sleeves of his white tunic, suddenly angry for no reason that Alice could fathom. "You couldn't bear to feel guilty, so you wanted someone to blame. Someone to accuse. You wanted to heap all of the consequences of your own actions onto a head other than yours. You wanted answers to the questions you didn't ask while your lover was still alive. And somewhere in the back of your head, you wanted to be warm and dry, and not quite so hungry."

"You're the door," said Alice, gripping the key so hard that her knuckles were turning white. "You're it."

"Yes," said Foris, showing his teeth in a hiss. "You wished to speak to me, the djinn, the creature within the mechanism. So here I am. Complimentary wish, so to speak." He grinned, running his fingers across the metal of his bracelets. "How are the hotcakes, by the way?"

There should never have been any hotcakes, thought Alice; this creature had no right to touch a memory that should have belonged only to Tarrant and herself. Very deliberately, Alice picked up the plate with the hotcakes and turned it upside down, letting the steaming pastries fall into a heap on the stone floor. The berry juice ran across the flagstones of the floor, spreading out in a darkish, growing stain, matching the sour look spreading across the djinn's face. Don't provoke him, some sensible voice in Alice's head shouted. He is very powerful, and he might be angry, and he has already tried to kill you once. Alice did not pay it the least attention; she had never been very good at following sensible courses of action.

"Hardly worth the life of the man who died for them," she said bitterly.

Foris merely shrugged at her. "I am hardly the one who killed him, mistress. I would think that was obvious. He merely discovered one of the rules that govern the acquisition and usage of my keys. _One_ rule - you're well on your way to learning the others."

"You grant my wishes," said Alice. "Is that a rule? While I'm holding a key, I mean."

Foris seemed to take the question badly, running his fingers over the iron bands of his bracelets. "Not entirely correct, mistress. You cannot force me to grant anything until the moment you actually, properly, wish for something" he said irritably. "I could have left you in the dark, mistress. I can quite easily return you there." He gestured once, a sharp twist of his bound hands, and the ruined pastries vanished.

He could, Alice thought uneasily, very easily do the same with the rest of the food. And although the djinn claimed to be acting in Alice's interests, she could hardly believe the creature possessed of any sort of altruistic motives.

"Why did you try to kill me?" Alice asked in a low voice.

The djinn raised his arms for a moment, and, fearing that she had offended it, Alice braced herself for the creature to do exactly what he had threatened - return her to a dark, wet, empty room. But after a moment, Foris wrapped his arms around his own shoulders and allowed a calmer expression to settle over his dark features.

"The key you hold represents a significant, and _finite_, reservoir of power, mistress. I would just as soon you not be alive to force me to spend such power on the whims of a mortal girl."

His voice was bitter, and dismissive, and entirely without any hint of guilt on his part, and Alice was suddenly furious.

"I only want to get out of here," said Alice angrily, and how _dare_ he say she could not use what was hers, what had been bought at the steepest price she could imagine. "That's all we've _ever_ wanted, for _three days_, and you could have just let us go -"

"_Three days_," the djinn hissed, and he was stroking the bracelets on his wrists, fingers running over the raised patterns in the metal. "They locked me away, mistress, thousands of years before you were even born. There is, as you say, no way in and no way out. And I cannot survive indefinitely without the sustenance I require." The djinn turned away from her suddenly, plucking a goblet from midair and raising it to his lips. He drunk deeply from it, lowering the glass and dabbing at his face with the corner of his tunic before turning back around to face Alice. The red stain lingering at the corner of his mouth matched the color of his eyes and it was too bright to be wine -

"If I tell you what it is," said Foris irritably. "You will only wish you didn't know."

Which immediately suggested to Alice a very disturbing possibility as to its contents.

Heaving an exaggerated sigh, the djinn set the goblet down on the table and folded his arms, his red eyes glinting under the bright locks of his hair.

Alice had the uncomfortable sensation that in taking up the key, she had unwittingly grasped the tail of a particularly dangerous breed of tiger. There was a story, wasn't there, about a prisoner that was placed in a room with two doors - one leading to a beautiful lady, and the other to a tiger. Choose correctly, and the prisoner would be set free, his crimes forgiven, and the lady given him in marriage. Choose the other way, and he would be (_Tarrant lying on the stones_) eaten alive by the tiger. And it seemed to Alice that here, she had only the word of the tiger himself as to which door was which.

Taking a deep breath, Alice pushed the image of Tarrant out of her mind. It wouldn't do to be distracted now. Carefully, Alice walked towards the table, gesturing towards the low bench at the other side of the table. "Please, take a seat," she said to the djinn.

"As my mistress wishes," Foris said smoothly, and with, Alice was almost sure, a heavy dose of irony. He dropped gracefully onto the low seat, picked up the wine glass and twirled it around his fingers, watching Alice steadily, and with what almost appeared to be a degree of interest. Giving the bottle-green key a squeeze for luck, Alice sat down herself. Time to ask the tiger which door it prefers its victims to take, she thought.

"Tell me about the rules governing your keys," she said.

"Is that a wish, mistress?" the djinn asked with a sour look.

"No, it is merely a polite request," said Alice patiently. "It can hardly require a great deal of your power to simply _talk_ to me, can it?" She had better pay attention to everything it said, Alice told herself. And to not let go of the key, not for an instant. She thought that Foris would have no qualms about taking it away from her, if he were able to do so. "Tell me about yourself, Foris."

The djinn put aside the wineglass, as though Alice had said something that had in some way caught his interest. "Very well," he said, disdain palpable in his voice. "If my mistress has nothing better to do but indulge her curiosity, I shall oblige." He stretched his arms, sending the fabric of his tunic rippling, and made a minute adjustment to the iron circlet on his head. Addressing the wineglass before him, the djinn began to speak.

"I was created a very long time ago as a mechanism for granting dreams. The fact that I am also a gateway between the worlds above and below is almost incidental. It's not the crossing between the worlds that interested my creators, mistress, it was the spaces between them. The raw, creative energy that is constantly fabricating the reality of the worlds. But that energy is blind - no resident of either world can consciously control it. So the builders created me."

"To access this energy."

"To access it, yes - and more importantly, to shape it according to their desires. But as they discovered, there mere fact of my existence wasn't sufficient. There was a basic law that my builders, for all of their cunning, were never able to entirely overcome.

"Tell me, mistress," the djinn said, looking away from the wineglass and addressing Alice directly. "What have you learned concerning the acquisition of power? In China, perhaps?" he prodded when Alice did not immediately respond. "Or maybe in London, those old friends of your father's, what they must have thought of you, and the things they said about your sister -"

Alice knew in an instant what the creature was getting at, never mind how on earth Foris knew about her aboveground life.

"Power always comes at a price," she said quietly. _The disdain of former acquaintances, the things said against my family... Isolation, jealousy, and loneliness._

"Exactly, mistress," said Foris, red eyes glittering in approval. "And not even the cleverest machinations of my builders could evade that basic law. Everything _always_ has a price. And the greater the power accessed, the higher the price will be. You have seen the price, haven't you, for accessing the power I control?"

Mouth suddenly dry, Alice could only nod. The blood had been dripping off the knife, and don't think about it, Alice, don't think about it now-

"I am blood magic, mistress," said the djinn. "In its most undiluted form."

"You're talking about human sacrifice," said Alice in a horrified whisper. "_Murders_."

"You should have seen the old courts of Underland - drenched in it, they were; it was their banner. The court of hearts - didn't you ever wonder at the name?" The djinn had half-closed his eyes, as though reliving some pleasant memory. "They would bring their captives before me, their old and feeble, their weak-minded. I would look into them and see their dreams. Everyone brought before me is given a key - a way to unlock the greatest wishes of their heart.

"But my builders made a curious mistake. The keys can be used by anyone, mistress. _Anyone_. Not all of my builders survived to see the first wishes I granted. And blood magic has never distinguished between what is freely offered and what is taken by force."

"_You_ can distinguish it," began Alice, but the djinn was already shaking his head.

"No, I can't," Foris corrected her in an exasperated voice. "I only have the barest trappings of a sense of morality because _you_ expect that I ought to have one. I only have emotions because _you_ think they ought to be there, and I am only talking to you at all because, for some reason, _you_ think that I should. I am a magical construct, mistress, and I do as I am bidden." He looked remarkably content with this series of facts, as though it did not matter to him one way or another. For Alice, though, the entire situation sounded horrible; though which part it was that troubled her, Alice had difficulty pinning down - the fact that he had been the cause of countless murders, or the fact that he honestly seemed not to be troubled by them.

"What sort of things were you bidden to do?" asked Alice, not entirely sure that she wanted to hear the answer.

"What was I _not_ bidden to do, mistress?" the djinn said with a shrug. "Grant healthy children. Or beautiful lovers. Or money, though less often than you might think. Some wished that a certain man would return to his family. Others that a certain wife would leave her husband. That a son would come back safe from a war..." The djinn smirked at Alice's startled expression. "Use of my keys does not indicate that someone is evil, mistress," he said, glancing pointedly at the one Alice herself held. "Merely... practical. Or desperate. Or willing to shed blood for the sake of some higher goal. And remember, mistress - not all keys are taken by force."

Alice gulped, thinking again of a ruined white shirt, a pale, still face half covered by water.

"Has anyone ever wished someone to come back from the dead?" Alice asked in a tight voice.

"Many times," Foris said severely. "I would not suggest that you try." The knife suddenly appeared back in his hand; the djinn amused himself for a few moments making the blade disappear from one hand and appear in the other. Something in the djinn's expression, coupled with the appearance of the knife, suggested to Alice that she ought not to press the djinn further. But its not impossible, thought Alice, watching the knife flick in and out of view. He didn't say it was impossible. Abruptly, Foris vanished the knife altogether and turned back to Alice.

"Their wishes did change, after a time," Foris continued, a strange look settling on his face as he spoke. "They still wanted as much as they ever did, but I believe they began to forget the cost. After a time, it was only the royalty I saw, an endless succession of kings and princes and their sons - and those unfortunate enough to be brought before me for the purpose of providing a key. The courts guarded me, mistress, jealously. I was both the source of their greatest power and the one secret they could not bear to share with anyone else. There were rumors, of course. Their own people feared and hated them, as they feared and hated themselves So many deaths, you see. So many sacrifices. The whole world might become a charnel house, if only their desires were fulfilled."

The djinn was speaking in a low voice, a transfixed expression blanketing his face, as though he were reliving the many generations he remembered as he spoke.

"They ruled, mistress. But not one of them ever wished to be a good ruler. There was war, after a time. The scions of my builders were convinced that they would win. The very last one came to me. He had killed one of his own concubines to acquire a key. I knew the woman. Many years before, he had wished for her, and I moved in her heart. I made her love him, and he had the audacity to butcher her like a caracase for his hounds, to kill what _I_ had given him!"

Foris broke off suddenly, shooting a sharp look at Alice, who was trying very hard to not think about butchering, or blood, or knives. And to not think about the things that had happened to countless people in Foris' history. Or the things that had happened to one particular person in Alice's history.

"Mistress?" Foris asked in a curious voice, and Alice immediately made an effort to compose her face.

"Yes, please go on -"

But Foris interrupted. "Mistress, are you afraid of me?"

"No," said Alice firmly, gripping her key and hoping that what she said was true.

"You should be, mistress," the djinn said in a low hiss, looking narrowly at Alice with his bright eyes. "They lost the war, after all - the scions of my builders. That very evening the king was viewing the slain bodies of his enemies, just as he wanted. Of course, his own head was on a spike at the time. Their successors came to me, but they had learned that I was not always to be trusted. Or perhaps they simply disapproved of the methods used to access my power. Few came. Then none. They locked me away, and no one ever comes. I think," the djinn finished slowly, "that I could be very angry about that, were I able to be angry at all."

It seemed clear to Alice that, whatever the djinn might think, he _was_ angry, simmering with it, even if he didn't want to admit it In fact, he seemed to be of a rather mercurial temperament, considering that he claimed to be an inanimate object.

"You've been alone down here, all that time?"

"Yes," said Foris in a clipped voice. "And starving. I was never meant to last indefinitely without blood, mistress. Now that I have obtained more -"

"Don't talk about him like he's your - your food!" shouted Alice. "He didn't do this for you - not any of it!"

"No, he didn't," agreed Foris with a toothy smile. "He did everything for _you_. But that is not to say we cannot both benefit from that fortuitous occurrence."

Alice, who could see little that was fortuitous about the last few days, said nothing, gripping the key in her hands and glaring defiantly at the djinn.

"You told me earlier," said Foris, "That the only thing you wanted was a way out of this room. That, I can easily provide. I am a door, after all."

"You can show me a way out?" asked Alice, glancing at the door itself, still resolutely shut behind her. But of course, she was talking to the door, wasn't she? It was rather confusing to keep track.

"I can create one," said Foris smoothly. "Anywhere in the worlds you want to go - Mamoreal, Edinburgh, London, Rome -"

"And what do you get in return?" asked Alice sharply.

"I get to keep enough of that delicious reservoir of power," he said, nodding at the key, "to ensure my survival for the next several centuries. You get to leave, and I get to live." The djinn spread his white-robed arms wide and grinned. "Everyone wins."

Alice glanced down at her key, glimmering brightly in her hand. A way out. Hardly what the door - Foris - had promised her before. (Her father, sitting at his study just as he had when she was a small girl.) The door had promised her dreams. The door had promised her wishes. Tarrant had died so that she could have them. And this murderous creature was telling her that she could not have what she wanted?

"What if I don't only want a way out, Foris?" Alice asked, rubbing her fingers along the smooth surface of the key.

Foris' crocodile smile vanished; replaced by a look more overtly reptilian. "Ah, miracles," the djinn purred. "King Midas wished for a miracle, you know. He lived a long, bitter life regretting he ever got one."

"You didn't answer my question," said Alice stubbornly.

"And you do not have the slightest conception of what sort of being you are dealing with," the djinn burst out. "If dreams are my stock in trade, then so are nightmares. You cannot control me, mistress, and you will take _exactly_ what I give you, and nothing more. We can both survive this, if you are willing to temper the miracles you wish from me."

"And if I am unwilling?" Alice pressed, aware that she was treading on very dangerous ground with the djinn.

"Do you remember the story of Midas - or Daedalus, the inventor? Their wishes ended up killing the ones they loved the best. And if you force me to work a miracle," said the djinn clearly, "I shall make sure that you regret it for the rest of your life. However long, or short, that happens to be."

Alice knew the stories that the djinn referred to. King Midas had seen his own son turn to a golden statue from the magic of his touch. Daedalus' son Icarus had flown on wax-paper wings so high that the sun melted the wax and he fell to his death. What might Foris do to her if she wished for -

Don't think about it, Alice, the girl told herself sternly. Thinking about miracles can't help right now. Whatever I ask for, he says he can twist it, and I certainly believe that he can. In most of the fairy tales Alice had ever heard, the malevolent genie waits until the person has actually made a wish before he turns it into a nightmare. Foris, apparently, wasn't content to wait that long. At least, thought Alice, she had an idea of what she was dealing with _before_ she made her wish.

"No one will come here after me," Alice reminded the djinn. "You're still locked away; that won't change. If you stay here, you'll only be trapped here for longer."

"I am willing to take my chances,"said the djinn quietly. "Someone shall remember an old story, or read a few lines in a forgotten book, or wonder at a certain walled-up doorway. Someone shall come. Though it is touching of you to be so concerned."

Alice wasn't concerned for the djinn at all; a fact she was sure the djinn was well aware of. She wanted, in an absent, idle sort of way, to see it die. To imagine it dwindling away into nothing alone in the dark - as had nearly happened to Alice herself. It was evil, and treacherous, and she hated herself for going along with it, for even giving its opinion a moment's consideration, but she did not see any other way that she was going to get out herself. Some bit of this must have shown on Alice's face, for the djinn rose smoothly from his seat, padding back and forth catlike, as he spoke.

"Hear me out - London could be as close as a whisper. Or Canton, if you prefer. I do understand something of your desires, mistress; I can bestow gifts you may find attractive. A successful business, or a devoted husband. You'll carry your _own_ key for the rest of your life, you know." Foris tapped his chest with one iron-cuffed hand. "Consider it a permanent souvenir. A good-luck charm, if you like. It _can_ grant wishes after all. If I were you, I shouldn't worry about falling ill with the plague, or being run down by a carriage in the street. You'll have for yourself a long, healthy, moderately successful life."

Alice was trying very hard to not look at the djinn. Not looking was harder than it should have been, the way he was stalking back and forth, as though she were a mouse that could be frightened into running. "Not terribly impressive, as wishes go," she said quietly.

"No? How many of your acquaintance have had their heart broken over the betrayal of a lover? The death of a child? Such things need not touch you, mistress." The djinn's eyes glittered redly and a shiver ran up Alice's spine, although for once Alice thought that the djinn was not intentionally trying to frighten her.

"I am quite willing to take you to wherever in the worlds you wish to go, and do whatever I might to ensure that the remainder of your gadfly existence is as pleasant as possible. No tricks, mistress. Manipulating coincidence in your world is a simple task. I've no doubts you will be pleased with the results."

"Coincidence seems a poor substitute for miracles, Foris," Alice chided.

"Coincidence has turned shepherds into emperors, mistress. Madmen into prophets and carpenters into gods. I do not feel gratitude, mistress, but I can express... appreciation," the djinn purred.

"I don't have another choice, do I?" said Alice.

"Not one that I will allow you to survive," said the djinn in that same velvety tone.

She could try to use her key anyway, Alice knew. Perhaps the djinn was lying. Perhaps she could control it better than the creature was letting on. But one thing Alice did know for sure - the djinn was deadly serious when it spoke of killing her, should she try. And no dream was worth dying for, Alice was sure about that. Tarrant thought differently, pointed out a small voice in Alice's head. But Tarrant isn't here. He's dead, and you will be too, unless you agree to Foris' bargain.

"All right," said Alice, trying not to sound as defeated as she felt. She wasn't giving in; she was surviving. She was doing what she needed to. She was still getting out; that was still what was important. That was still winning; that was still the only thing Alice needed to do.

"So, mistress? What shall it be?"

"London," Alice said in a quite voice. She hadn't seen her mother in over a year, and if her life was going to play out like Foris had said, it almost didn't matter where she told the door to take her. If she was going to be successful, no matter what, then maybe she didn't need to try so hard. Alice had made choices, so many of them, ever since the Jabberwocky. Somewhere along the way, they had started to go wrong. Alice wasn't quite sure how, or why. It started with the opium, maybe, or perhaps those last few days in Canton. Or leaving the ship with Tarrant, the first few steps down a path that had led to a half-drowned body, bleeding red -

Maybe it would be better to let someone else make the choices. Not forever. Just for a little while. If Foris could do what he claimed, perhaps Alice would not need to make many choices at all. Perhaps things would be a little easier, once she was back. If coincidence itself might work in her favor, as Foris said that it might. Before, Alice had won for herself many things, and they had always come at a price. Power always comes with a price, and for the first time in many years, Alice was bitterly tired of paying it. Tarrant - God, the cost was too high.

Alice lifted the key in her hand, scrutinizing it, watching it shining with its odd, bottle-green light. It was the key to her dreams, and this time, she had not had to bleed to obtain it. What else to do but thank him, and use it, and not let his sacrifice have been for nothing? Survive, for him. Go back, and cry a little, and remember him from time to time. Light a little candle in the chapel. _Hail Mary, full of grace,_ and hope that for him, it was starlight. She hoped it would be starlight. She would never know.

"What was his dream?" she asked suddenly. "It's in here, isn't it? Somewhere. You must know."

"Of course I know," sniffed the djinn, as though Alice had said something mildly rude. "I wouldn't be very good at granting them otherwise. And if you were so curious, you could have asked him yourself while he was still alive."

Alice did not have any good answer to that. "Yes. But I am asking you," she said simply.

Foris sighed again and picked up the wine glass, taking another slow swallow, and for a moment Alice thought that he was going to ignore her question entirely. But the djinn turned back to her, licked his lips once, and spread his hands. "Once, mistress. And briefly," he growled, and Alice wondered exactly how much power he was obliging himself to spend by agreeing to her request. I deserve it, Alice reminded herself guiltily. Its my key. It's not like I'm stealing from him. _I_ am the one being generous. Though given the nature of the creature she was dealing with, Alice wondered whether she wouldn't be better off being selfish, just this once. He'd killed people, hadn't he? Or as good as killed them. He'd trapped them, he said he didn't have a conscience and he had killed-

Then a scene flickered into being in the air before her and any thoughts of the morality of the djinn dropped out of her head entirely.

It was Tarrant, whole and healthy and standing in a meadow. The buds of the early spring wildflowers were just tall enough the brush at the edges of his tailcoat. Facing him, (breathe, Alice) was Alice herself, or at least a version of her. She must have been six or seven, barely coming up to his waist, and he was leaning over, intently listening to something that the dream-Alice was saying. The girl reached up, and Tarrant obediently slung the dream girl into his arms, whispering something into her ear that made her laugh. He turned, still holding the girl in his arms, and Alice caught one dizzying glimpse of her own face before the djinn dropped his hands, and the image blinked out like someone dousing a light.

"Enough," said the djinn, and Alice had the strangest impression that the creature was nervous. "You've seen what you wanted to know. Are we to continue wasting time in this manner, or are you ready to make a decision?"

Alice closed her eyes for a moment, seeing again the image of Tarrant in his dream. Red hair, half-covered by a hat perched at a jaunty angle. A bright, laughing mouth. Strong, and happy. How she wanted to remember him. Like that - not the past few days, or the last minutes in the impossible room. Alice opened her eyes, quickly finding something else to look at before any more bloodstained images happened across her mind.

Let it go, Alice told herself. She had found out what she wanted to know, and it hadn't even hurt as much as she had expected it to. Let it go, then. Though it had been curious. Tarrant had gotten the color of her eyes wrong. She was almost certain that she'd seen a _green_-eyed girl, just before the djinn had doused the image.

Foris was still watching her carefully, arms folded solemnly into the folds of his tunic. "Mistress?" he prompted.

"London, then." Alice said. "I would like to see my family." What's left of them, she added silently. My mother and my sister but not - No miracles today, she reminded herself. No impossible things.

"Very well," said the djinn in a velvet voice. "Hold out your key, and think of that. _Exactly_ where you want to be. And mistress?"

"Yes?" she said, mouth dry, the key seeming to grow in weight in her hand.

"Keep in mind the terms of our bargain, mistress. At all times."

"I will," said Alice, looking away from the smoldering red of his eyes. He had trapped them, and hurt them, and he was evil, whatever he claimed, and she did not care a penny for whether he lived or died. She also realized that he probably knew that as well. Fair enough, Alice thought. The djinn had already proved that he had few compunctions about killing her. Just be grateful that there is a compromise at all. A path that both of them could agree on, could walk without killing each other. The one path that meant that both the prisoner and the tiger got to live, though neither one of them got what they really, truly wanted. But everyone lived; every one except -

Shutting away that though as quickly as it had appeared, Alice held out the key, the bottle-green glint winking at her in the strange light. "London," she whispered to herself, thinking of the rose-lined gardens, the upholstered furniture, comfortably sagging and slightly worn, the sound of her sister's voice, calling her name from the stairway. "Take me home, Foris," she whispered, and closed her eyes.

Alice felt the key grown warm under her fingers, and a strange murmuring sound filled the air, like someone singing in a distant room. Surprised, Alice opened her eyes, glancing nervously about the room. Foris was standing across from her, iron bound arms folded across his chest, lounging against the side of the table. Only the furrowed look on his face betrayed the intense concentration that he was bestowing on the apparently featureless door before him. Not entirely featureless, she realized. There were tiny threads, bottle-green and twining about each other, weaving a picture on the dark wooden surface. She could just make out the shapes, and it was her father's study. There was the old wooden desk with the high backed chair just beyond it, a patch of brighter light that must be the window along the far wall. And twisted through every bit of the picture, the growing, twisting pattern of green, weaving the dream into being. Foris' magic, Alice thought. The magic of the key.

As if in response to the thought, the key seemed to shiver under her fingers; Alice startled and partially uncurled her hand, tearing her eyes from the growing tapestry before her, careful not to drop it. The key was glowing almost, shining with the same bottle-green light, but was it smaller than it had been a moment before? Alice was almost sure it had been larger when she had first picked it up. It was as though the key were slowly melting, as though tiny flakes were being stripped away to feed the tapestry that Foris was constructing. The green was brighter, bottle-green and willow-green, and _he_ had sung about willows, hadn't he, that night they had left the ship together? The murmuring sound was filling the air, and Alice was almost certain there were words in it, if she could only manage to hear them properly.

"Mistress," Foris shouted, and there was a tautness in his voice that Alice had never heard before.

Yes, right, thought Alice in a confused fashion. London, and home, everything in shades of blues and grays, the fog and the sky. Focus on the strands of the webbing that Foris is creating, and the strands of green are all through it, and they are the exact same color as his eyes. _His_ eyes. Tarrant had dreamed of a girl with green eyes. Why had he dreamed of that? What was it he had wanted? They key was the _exact_ color as his eyes - and the key was definitely smaller than it had been a minute ago. She had asked about miracles, and he hadn't answered her question.

He'd never said it was impossible. He'd never said it wasn't.

Alice could feel the tiny threads of the magic she cradled in her hand; she knew what it was doing, and she knew exactly how she was going to use it. She had thought she could win, by agreeing to Foris' bargain. Now, with the power of the key working in her hands, Alice knew that she could rewrite every rule of the game. As long as the magic of the key lasted, she could control it all - anything she cared about. Anything she had every dreamed of, she had the power to bring into being. Willow, willow, sang the voice in the air, a voice Alice was almost certain she recognized, and it was nearly loud enough to drown out the sound of Foris, shouting and furious and desperate, but Alice did not want to listen to him. Not now, not ever. Let him die. Let him die, starving and alone in the dark, if he would grant her this one wish. Tarrant, Alice thought. Bring him back. I love him and I want him with me. I never managed to tell him that. Please, bring him back.

The key twisted in her hand, and Alice could feel the smooth metal slipping away under her fingers, the magic draining from it at a frightening rate, and Foris was screaming. Alice jerked towards the sound, and the djinn was on his knees, clawing at the shackles around his wrists as though they were burning him.

"Stop this now, mistress," he snarled. "No good will come of this, I swear to you!" Ignore it, Alice thought. The tattered threads of her home in London were swirling, as though caught in a sudden wind. Ignore that, too. Just focus on the key, whittling itself away into nothing in her hand.

"Mistress," Foris tried again, pulling himself up from the floor with considerable effort. "End this now or I swear you shall regret it. You _cannot_-"

"I can do whatever I want," Alice shouted back. And she could, she could feel the magic, doing - something; the threads weaving together in a new and infinite design, their power running through her fingers like water.

"They all say that, mistress," the djinn replied in a strangely toneless voice, at odds with the smoldering desperation in his eyes. With one manacled hand, he reached towards Alice and gestured. The bottle-green magic tangled, only for an instant, but something was _wrong_, there was something very not right. She could fix it, she could, she just needed more time, but the key was almost gone and if she could only figure out what he had done -

The knife was in Foris' hand, Alice realized with a start. But he was making no move to use it, simply leaning against the table as though exhausted, watching her through the strands of his lank yellow hair. He can't use it, she told herself. He can't hurt me. Not while I'm holding the key. Which was whittling itself into nothing, nearly gone, and there wasn't enough time -

Foris grinned at her, sudden and wild, and Alice had the feeling that she had just made a terrible mistake. Don't try to trick the tiger, Alice; he knows the rules of his own game better than you ever can. Whatever else happens, he will kill me the moment the magic runs out. Alice dropped her hand, abruptly cutting off the magic of the key from whatever was drawing on it. There was a ringing in Alice's ears for a moment; the key squirmed once in her hand, then was still. It was barely the size of a matchstick now, glowing feebly with the same green light.

With a low sigh, Foris folded his arms back into the sleeves of his tunic, glowering at her as the wisps of the image of London hung in the air behind him like a scraps of an unfinished painting. He was panting, sweat plastering his yellow hair to his head, and Alice had a moment to wonder what on earth she had done. But Foris' fire-bright eyes were sweeping past her, to something in the far corner of the room, and Alice turned towards it just as it toppled over with a crash.

"Dear me," said the mannequin, as it tried to pick itself up off the floor.

* * *

_Puffin's Note - _

_Sooo... what's up with the mannequin? C'mon, post a review and take a guess..._

_Hey - it's September, and us Alaskans go back to getting the state to ourselves. Hooray for more writing time! Also, this chapter was supposed to be longer; but the word count is getting ridiculous again, and you all deserve an update (I know I've been remiss) so I split it. Hopefully I'll have the second part of this out soon. So,there are __**still**__ two chapters to go until the end. _


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

_Puffin's Note -Manechka - thank you for your very kind review. Red Room Flare - here are a few word ponies in case an update throws you off the wagon again. Large. Fluffy. Mattress. Thanks also to Ngoc Cho, whispering tea mist and ILoveYourCreativity for their continuing reviews and encouragement._

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The mannequin would have been a curious contraption, even if it had not been able to move; Alice found herself staring at it for several seconds before she could bring herself to approach it. The bulk of the figure was made of metal - thin, curlicued strips trailing downwards in the shape of a torso, narrowing at the waist to form a sort of pedestal. At the base of the pedestal, where one might normally expect to find feet, there were half a dozen small wheels, all spinning about frantically as the figure attempted to push itself upright. The arms, thin, metallic, and terminating in a blocky imitation of a hand, seemed highly insufficient to the task. After a few moments trying to wrestle itself back onto its wheels, the mannequin dropped back to the floor with a metallic crash. The noise seemed to startle the automaton; it covered its ears with its hands and peered about the room suspiciously, as if it suspected something else as being the source of the clatter.

"Hello?" the mannequin called in an achingly familiar voice. "Is anyone there?"

The bit of bread Alice had choked down earlier was sitting in her stomach like lead; she could not immediately bring herself to answer.

"Not what you were expecting, mistress?" Foris murmured. Alice turned to the djinn, a look of horror blossoming in her face. Foris was slumped against the low table as though exhausted; he glared limpidly at Alice through his sweat-slickened hair.

"Put it right, Foris, I swear to God I'll kill you if you don't!" Alice wasn't sure herself whether she was threatening or pleading; the tremor of tears in her voice made it difficult to tell. She would do either with equal alacrity if there was even the slightest chance that the djinn would comply. But he merely grinned wider, and the bottle-green key in her hand was tiny, its magic very nearly exhausted. Alice could see no way that such a small thing would be up to the task of repairing what she had done.

"Alice?" called the mannequin again, sounding a little taken aback. "Is that you?"

She couldn't stay away from it, not when it called to her with that voice, even though the thought of approaching it more closely, or seeing in any more detail the results of her handiwork, made her feel as though she might vomit. Shakily, she stepped closer, clutching the tattered waistcoat tightly about her shoulders, as though it were protection against the _thing_ sprawled on the ground before her.

"Hello, there," she managed in a whisper.

"That_ is_ you, isn't it, Alice?" the figure said in a relieved tone, pushing itself up and peering in her direction. Its face was wooden, carved to the same vague outlines as were the hands. Rough, carved impressions for the nose and the mouth, the latter of which was stretching into a tentative sort of smile. Its head was entirely bald, the eyes two round specks of green glass that looked to have been glued directly to the wood. "I couldn't tell; there was such a terrific noise and -"

"Yes, it's me," she said shortly. It was still trying to get itself up, but its wheels were rolling out from under it; the mannequin was scrabbling to keep from falling on its face. Before it could do so, Alice grabbed the mannequin under the arms, hauling it upright. It weighed far less than she had expected; the metal strips forming his chest were cold to the touch and she could see straight through the gaps between them to the flagstones beneath. Closing her eyes at the disturbing sight, the girl heaved upwards and the mannequin tipped drunkenly onto its wheels, clutching at her arm for a moment as though unsure of its balance. Steadier now, it released its grip on her arm, rubbing at its bottle-green eyes as though they hurt.

"Are you quite..." Alice couldn't finish the question; the mannequin was most certainly not all right. Not even close to being all right.

"Who were you shouting at?" the mannequin asked, turning its head about as though listening for something. "I can't see anything at all."

"I expect because it's very dark in here," Alice lied. The mannequin murmured something at that, tottering on its wheels for a moment before steadying itself.

Blind as well, Alice thought dully. On top of everything else that's wrong. Perhaps that is a kindness, she added, watching the mannequin tentatively run its wooden hands over its own chest and arms.

"Alice," the mannequin began in an odd tone. "I seem to have misplaced my clothing."

Alice made a noise that could have been a laugh, in a different time or place. Typical of him to think of the oddest things that she would never have remarked on. Worrying about clothing at a time like this. And the immediate realization, he doesn't know.

She still had his waistcoat, and hurriedly shrugged out of it and pulled it over the mannequin's own shoulders. The figure worried its way into it, clumsily, as though the joints of its arms no longer worked in the manner to which it was accustomed. It turned away from Alice the moment the coat was settled on its frame, wheeling itself a few feet away. It was trying to do up the buttons, Alice saw, and having a notable lack of success in doing so. Not surprising, considering that the mitten-like wooden hands didn't actually have any fingers.

"Let me," said Alice impulsively, stepping closer and putting a hand to the side of the waistcoat. She could feel the metal bands of his body through the fabric. The mannequin was wearing the coat; it ought to look more like a person, but it didn't.

Slowly, the mannequin dropped its arms, standing stiffly as Alice began doing up the buttons as quickly as she could.

"You saw that," said the mannequin in a low voice. Immediately, Alice stopped fiddling with the coat; it had sounded angry, almost. "_Is_ it dark in here, Alice?" the figure asked.

"No, it isn't," she admitted in a low voice, and the mannequin was pulling away, buttons still undone, ragged coat falling oddly around the metal slats of its body. He was pulling away from her and she had to explain; surely he would know that she wouldn't lie to him except if she had a very good reason. _Was_ there a very good reason that would explain what she had done?

"I didn't mean to -" Alice stopped, completely at a loss as to how to finish that sentence, and tried again. "It isn't what you think; everything went wrong at the end. I didn't know what to do, and you were gone; you had -"

Alice broke off, not wanting to say anything about those last few minutes in the room if he didn't remember what had happened there himself. "You had -" And stopped again at the look of anguish that crossed the mannequin's carved face.

"Yes, I remember that part," it said slowly.

"I'm so sorry, Tarrant," she said. It was the first time that she had used the hatter's name in conjunction with the figure standing before her.

Tarrant nodded, the barest of acknowledgments, and raised his carved wooden hands to his face, rubbing again at the glassy green eyes. He ran one hand across his forehead, as if he meant to run it through his hair; the line that was his mouth twitched abruptly as his rough hands encountered bare wood. The mannequin took in a deep breath, held it for a moment and let it go with a shudder, dropping his hands limply to his sides.

"Alice," he began, and his voice sounded more tired than she could ever remember hearing it. "Did anyone ever _ask_ Eurydice if she wanted to leave the land of the dead?"

"I don't know," replied Alice after a moment, for he seemed to be honestly waiting for an answer. "They do say that Orpheus missed her very much." Had she been selfish, to call him back? Alice didn't think so. It seemed to her that selfish people who got what they wanted ought to be happier than this. Or at the very least, they ought not to be miserable, ought not to be choking on the feeling of it. _King Midas wished for a miracle,_ Foris had said._ He lived a long, bitter life regretting he ever got one._

"Did you miss me?" Tarrant asked.

"Terribly," said Alice, and it seemed that it might be permissible to touch his arm, no matter that it did not feel like an arm anymore. "I'm so sorry, Hatter."

Perhaps he heard the threatening tears in her voice, for the mannequin cut her off quickly. "You've nothing to be sorry for, my dear," he said firmly. "Don't cry; I shan't approve. You might do up the buttons, if you could," he added.

Carefully, Alice did so, two sets of them, and tiny; twin lines of pearls marching in lines across the dark fabric. The mannequin was murmuring something as she did so, slow and uncertainly, like a half-remembered prayer. "What a work in piece is man... a work in pieces; how noble in - pieces of man... how noble a paragon..." He trailed off, his stiff face twisting with thought. "I can't remember it, Alice." His voice was trembling. "It's very important, but the words don't know how it goes anymore."

"What are you trying to remember?" Alice asked softly, fastening the last button and letting her hands fall to her sides.

"Everything," said the mannequin simply.

"He is trying to remind himself that he is human, mistress" interrupted Foris in a tart voice. "Which he isn't anymore, so that might be a rather tall order."

Tarrant spun about at hearing the djinn speak, and Alice could see him physically pulling himself up straighter, as though the knowledge that there was an audience other than Alice had spurred him to put a braver face on the situation. Minutely adjusting the collar of his waistcoat, the mannequin spun its wheels, rolling slowly into the center of the room.

"I don't believe we've met," said the mannequin loudly, offering a hand in the djinn's general direction. "Tarrant Hightopp, hatter to the White Court."

"Hatter," said Foris with a sniff, rising wearily from the bench. "I should think a hat _rack_ would be a more suitable occupation, given your current state. My name is Foris." Foris grasped the offered hand but instead of shaking it, the djinn bowed low over the wrist, kissing the pulse point before Tarrant hastily snatched his arm back. Foris licked his lips once, as though something about the metal tang appealed; the mannequin rolled backwards in a hasty clatter of wheels, holding the arm to his chest protectively.

"Leave him alone," snarled Alice at the unrepentant djinn. "Tarrant, don't trust him; he's how we got into this mess."

"_I _am how we got into this mess?" repeated the djinn incredulously. The knife was suddenly back in his hand and Foris was stroking the blade, as though he were trying to test the compulsion that kept him from harming her. "_We_ had a bargain, mistress, which _you_ saw fit to break. I only did exactly what I told you I would. So now you have your miracle. I wonder which of you regrets it more," the djinn added darkly, glancing in Tarrant's direction.

"I didn't mean to," Alice began hotly, but the djinn was already cutting her off.

"Of course you _meant_ to, mistress, the magic never could have worked otherwise!" Foris was circling them, the tattered scraps of the unfinished gateway to London fluttered at his heels as he passed; Tarrant's wheels were spinning on the stone as he tried to keep track of the djinn's position. "If you hadn't meant to, _you_ would be back in London,_ I _would have power enough to exist through the next handful of centuries, and your curious little hat stand over there would still be peacefully pushing up daisies!"

"But you _changed_ him -"

"Exactly as I warned you I would do," said the djinn clearly, dropping gracelessly into one of the chairs. Foris picked up his abandoned goblet and ran one finger along the inside of the rim, looking unsurprised when the glass proved to be bone-dry. "Hardly a fair trade, mistress; you're well and truly trapped now. And if I starve, mistress, so do you."

Alice had not been expecting this last remark; she glanced quickly between the door to London (ripped, tattered and obviously incomplete) and the small table - still, thankfully, covered with food. And the immediate realization; once it is gone, I very much doubt there will be any more. Foris is hardly in a mood to grant me anything right now, even supposing he has the power to do it. I could wish for it, Alice thought. Right up to the moment where I spend the last of the key's power.

Tarrant was pulling at her sleeve, or trying to, the fabric catching on the wood of his hands. "Alice," he said urgently. "What does he mean about trapped? Alice, please tell me what's going on!"

He sounded frightened now, and she was trying to shush him, to tell him something remotely comforting (never mind whether it was true or not), but Foris was not done quite finished speaking.

"How long do you think the food will last?" he called from the table. "Longer than if you'd managed to bring him back properly! This way, at least you don't have to share!"

"Alice," said Tarrant, and there was a quaver in his voice. "I think you had better tell me exactly what happened after I - well, after I left."

"Over here," said Alice, leading him to a far corner of the room, where she at least might have the illusion of privacy. The djinn, however, was slumped against the table, seemingly not paying attention to anything beyond the knife he passed lazily from hand to hand. .

"You were dead when I woke up," said Alice, and told him the entire story from there. Taking up the key, her conversation with Foris and her eventual bargain with the creature. The doorway to London that she had planned to create; what she had created instead. The mannequin listened quietly for the most part, nodding from time to time and rubbing every so often at his useless glass eyes. Alice, for her part, was determined not to cry. While she did not entirely succeed at this, the thought that it would be harder on Tarrant if she _did_ cry, kept her from giving way to the urge to fling herself onto the mannequin's shoulder and sob. There was also the knowledge that Foris was still in the room, apparently ignoring them but undoubtedly, Alice supposed, listening in. She'd almost have preferred the djinn to have stabbed her rather than have this happen, but it wouldn't do anyone any good for him to know that.

"I don't think I have a way out anymore," Alice finished in a small voice. "The key's tiny now, Tarrant; there's hardly any of it left. And you're here, but - he made it happen wrong, and he warned me he would do it. I'm sorry."

Alice knew that sorry did not even begin to cover it. Tarrant had never inquired as to what, exactly, he looked like, and Alice was not quite willing to volunteer the information herself. But he could very easily guess.

Tarrant sighed once, rubbing at his head as though he were trying to dispel a headache. "You shouldn't have tried to bring me back," he said roughly. "You ought to have left. I gave up _everything_ for you, - how does it help anything if I am here and you still don't have a way out?" It was the closest Tarrant had ever come to shouting at her.

"I hadn't thought that far," Alice admitted.

Tarrant turned abruptly on his wheels, wrapping his hands tightly about his waistcoat. "Dear God, Alice," he choked out, and it seemed to Alice that he would be crying, if that were even possible for him anymore. She ought to say something, try her best to comfort him, it was the least she could do. But she didn't want to touch him. If she only looked at his back, if she did not have to see the wooden face or the metal bones, she could almost pretend that it was really him. It was a beautiful illusion; Alice knew that it would not last if she actually touched him. Silly, Alice told herself. It _is_ him, and he only looks like this because of me.

"Tarrant?" she asked cautiously, and he spun back around as though suddenly remembering she was there.

"Show me the doorway," he said, with the attitude of a man grasping at any straw that might present itself. "The one to London; the one you were trying to make."

"Over here," said Alice, placing a hand lightly on his arm and carefully leading him towards the door. The mannequin seemed to sense when they were within its shadow, raising one fingerless hand and turning it back and forth as though feeling for a breeze. The shreds of the image covered the surface of the door, much like a haphazard wallpapering job that had never quite been completed. There was at least three quarters of it finished, Alice thought. Might that get me three quarters of the way home? Or, a more disturbing notion, might that get only three quarters of _me_ all the way home?

"It feels like a doorway," Tarrant said, running his hand a few inches over the surface of the door, as though somehow, he could sense that it was there. "And I ought to know what they feel like by now," he murmured, speaking, Alice thought, mostly to himself. "But they never lead anywhere good..." He broke off and wheeled about to face the room. "Is this a way out?" he asked Foris sharply.

The djinn raised its head from the table, regarding the pair of them listlessly. "Not for you, it isn't" the djinn snorted. "I wouldn't give two drachmas for your chances at crossing into the aboveground world as anything more substantial than a few bolts of cloth. Or maybe a pair of trousers."

"And for Alice?" Tarrant continued in the same steady voice.

The djinn's red eyes grew speculative for a moment. "Possibly. The passage is incomplete. She _might_ survive crossing through it. I doubt it leads to London, or at least, not the exact part of London that you were hoping to get to before you decided you had to have a miracle instead," said the djinn in a fierce voice.

"But it might lead somewhere?" asked Alice softly.

"All passages lead _somewhere_," snorted Foris. "It might not be a very good somewhere. Nor a very safe somewhere, either."

"Neither is here a very good or a very safe place," Tarrant said. "You say the door goes somewhere - do you know where? You _are_ supposed to be a door yourself, as I understand."

Foris threw up a hand and gave the pair an aggrieved look. "I only know where the door was _supposed_ to go," he said irritably, "before my mistress took it into her head that she did not wish to finish it. All I can say is that it does go _somewhere_, and most likely the terminus is in the aboveground world."

Tarrant shifted uneasily on his wheels, and even through the strangely flat features of his transformed face, Alice knew that he was about to bring up a subject that she did not want to discuss. Changed or not, he was _here_, and they'd hardly gotten a moment together as it was; she was not about to run off and leave him -

"_You_ say its a way out," Alice snapped at the djinn. "Why should I trust anything that you tell me?"

"Because _I_ am not the one who breaks bargains, mistress," Foris snarled. The djinn's eyes lit up like candles; he hauled himself to his feet and stalked towards Alice with a little of his usual grace. "These are the basic facts of your situation, mistress. You will starve if you stay here, and pleasant as that would be to witness, it won't actually do me any good. Not what the blood magic needs. Unfortunately," the djinn added with a leer. "I could make you food, but I am hardly going to spend the last few drops of my power attempting to keep you alive. You could, of course, wish for food from time to time..."

The djinn trailed off with an inquiring look at Alice.

"And the moment I use up all the magic in the key, you'll kill me," she said in a flat voice.

The djinn inclined his head with a small smile. "Precisely so, mistress." Foris turned back to the mannequin, pacing a few steps closer and clapping it on the shoulder. "She ought to try the door. We shan't know whether she survives, of course, but you seem an optimistic enough sort of creature. You can hope she lives, and I can hope she doesn't."

Alice glared back at the djinn, hardly aware she was balling her hands into fists. She was determined to say something to the horrible creature, no matter what it was - but then Tarrant was wheeling away, head drooping and rubbing at his eyes again.

"Alice," he called in a low voice, holding out one fingerless hand.

She went to him, taking the offered hand in her own, trying to ignore how cold it felt, and how lifeless.

"Alice, you ought to-"

"Hush," said Alice fiercely, wrapping one arm around his wooden waist. She didn't want to have this conversation now. Didn't want to have this conversation ever, actually. She wondered how long she could put him off. "Tarrant, I'm so sorry. I've made a mess of everything, haven't I?"

"I shouldn't say everything," said Tarrant seriously. "We had our moments, didn't we? From time to time? "

"Yes, I suppose we did," said Alice, acutely aware of Foris, pacing along the far side of the room, watching them with the utmost attention. "Tarrant, don't -"

It still hurt, even though he said it very gently. "You need to go, Alice."

"No, Hatter, please, there's time-" Alice dredged up an attempt at cheerfulness. "There's plenty of food on the table still, I can stay -"

The mannequin cut her off, sliding a wood-grained hand clumsily across her cheek. "No, Alice. It isn't safe here for you. I know you, Alice. Sooner or later, you will wish for something, and he'll be waiting for that moment. Don't give him the opportunity. I can't let that happen to you, Alice. I couldn't bear it - not after everything else."

Alice didn't have any words that might be up to the task of answering him, but she tried anyway.

"I won't let that happen. And I am not leaving, not yet; we still have time -"

"Alice," Tarrant said again, brushing her chin with his hand, tilting her head up to make sure that she was looking at him. "You need to leave. You need to leave now, and I can't go with you."

"No, hatter -"

"You did it once before, Alice," he said, and his voice sounded sharper than it ought to be, and Alice didn't want him angry, not now. "You took the key and you left. You need to do it again."

"But I just got you back!"

"I know," he said, running one wooden hand across the crown of her head, tangling in the locks of her hair. "I know."

Alice's protests had somehow slipped into tears; she did not quite know the moment that it had happened. She didn't try to contain them, simply stood with both hands wrapped around the mannequin, her tears soaking into his battered waistcoat. Tarrant was still stroking her hair, murmuring quiet, comforting nonsense into her ear. It was an old song, Alice realized after a time, something Alice hadn't heard since she was a small girl.

"_Are you going to Scarborough Fair?  
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme  
Remember me to one who lives there  
She once was a true love of mine"_

It was a song of impossible things, and it was beautiful and Alice could hardly bear to hear it. Too many impossible things; once she had thought they could all come true. Every impossible thing in the world could be true if she wanted it to be. Every impossible thing. Even bringing someone back from the dead. But the song was a lie, and it was terribly cruel. She had used up all of her wishes; the bottle-green key was nearly spent. And _some_ impossible things - well, if they weren't technically impossible, perhaps they ought never to be done.

"I will remember you," said Alice, very, very quietly. "I won't ever forget."

"I believe you," said Tarrant, and she thought he might have kissed the top of her head. "Only Alice? Not like this."

"I'll try," said Alice, and it seemed very likely that she was going to start crying again. And then burst out with, "Tarrant, I can't just _do_ this to you and then swan off; it's terribly unfair!"

To her surprise, she actually heard Tarrant laugh at that. "Hush," he said, laying a wooden palm across her lips, the faintest hint of amusement in his voice. "You _are_ going to swan off, as you so charmingly put it. I absolutely insist." The laughter drained out of his voice as he continued. "I knew what I was doing when I - when I left you the key. It's yours to use, Alice. Any help it can give you; any chance you have to get out - take it. Promise me you will."

Alice nodded once, realized that he couldn't see it, and said the words out loud. "I promise, hatter." She took his hand in her own , fingers tracing patterns along the lines of the wood. "You gave me something very precious, before. I'm afraid I didn't use it very well. I shall try to do better in the future."

"No more apologies, my dear." The mannequin might have been smiling; Alice couldn't quite tell. "I am very happy to see you again, regardless of circumstances. You wanted me with you. I consider that a compliment of the very highest order."

"It didn't turn out very well," admitted Alice.

"No, I don't suppose it did," agreed Tarrant quietly.

"Tarrant?"

"Yes, Alice?"

"What is going to happen to you?"

Tarrant sighed, running one fingerless hand down the front of his wooden chest. "It's still starlight, up there. At least, I think it was. I can't really remember, but I think it was pleasant." And then asked out of nowhere, "If you had a daughter, Alice - what would you call her?"

"Imogene," said Alice, blurting out the first name that came to mind. "Or Margaret. Tarrant, I have no idea."

"Well, that makes two of us," the mannequin said amicably. "Though it would have been nice to know what her name was. Now, take my hand. I should like to see you off as far as the door."

She laid a hand across his and for a moment there was only the quiet sound of Tarrant's clattering wheels, matched by Alice's slow footsteps. Foris had stood, his arms folded into the sleeves of his robe, watching with an unreadable expression. As before, Tarrant seemed to know when they had come to the edge of the locked door and slowly pulled away his arm.

"Fairfarren, Alice," he said, and she couldn't let him go with those words. Before she had time to think through what she was doing, Alice turned back to the mannequin, wrapped one hand behind its wooden neck and kissed him. It was strange, uncomfortable, and carried with it the distinct possibility of splinters. The mannequin was still taller than she was; it didn't seem able to bend its neck far enough to accommodate the difference in height. The wooden lips were very limited in their ability to respond; Alice pulled back quickly, more shaken that she wanted to admit. Tarrant's hands settled lightly on her shoulders; wooden and numb, just like the mouth. Alice's first, terrible impulse was to shrug them away.

"Take care of yourself," he said and then he was pushing her away, spinning backwards on his wheels in a slow circle, hands creeping up to cover his bottle-green eyes.

He will be howling, thought Alice, the moment I leave.

"Foris," she called in a low voice. Obediently, the djinn stalked closer, coming to within a hair's breadth of where she stood. He was, Alice realized for the first time, exactly her height, and she could see tiny wrinkles in the corners of his eyes; she was certain they had not been there before. "Don't hurt him, Foris," she said in a low voice. "He hasn't done anything to you."

"You persist in thinking of me as evil," the djinn said with a reproachful look. "This is not so." And added, in a low voice. "He will not last long, mistress. Perhaps that is a mercy."

"I'm sorry that it happened this way,"Alice told him. "I didn't mean-" She stopped, uncertain how to phrase an apology she didn't even know if she wanted to make.

Foris, nevertheless, looked pleased. "Survival, mistress, is never right or wrong," he said. "It simply is what it is."

There ought to be tears, thought Alice, turning back to face the tattered scraps of the unfinished doorway. Instead, Alice only felt strangely distant, as though Tarrant and Foris and wishes that turn into nightmares were already a world apart. She was in a nightmare, but she would wake up soon. Or she wouldn't wake up at all, and Alice was not entirely certain which option she would prefer. Carefully, she uncurled her fingers around the remnants of the key, as thin and insubstantial as a matchstick, still glowing tremulously with its own bottle-green light. So tiny, thought Alice. I could give him something before I go. But what on earth could I wish for him? There is so little magic left, and Foris will tear it to pieces whatever I do.

The veiled room about Alice seemed to flutter, just for a moment, and in that moment Alice knew exactly what she would wish. Exactly what she could do with the tiny scraps that had been given her.

_You carry a key_, the djinn had said. _The blood magic has never distinguished between what is freely offered and what is taken by force_.

"Tarrant gets the key, Foris," Alice said, the words sounding sharp in the sudden silence, and she could feel the magic of the key shimmering in the air as she spoke. "_My_ key. And you give him _exactly_ what he wants. No bargains, and no tricks."

"No!" screamed Tarrant over her last words, and the very last bottle-green slivers of the key vanished, curling into the air like smoke. Alice closed her hand reflexively around the space where it had been, not quite able to stop herself from snatching at it after it had gone.

"Please no, please don't, Alice -" Tarrant was pleading, with her or with Foris; she wasn't certain. He couldn't tell where they were, arms outstretched and feeling blindly for her, his wheels scrabbling frantically on the flagstones. Foris' bright eyes flicked to him; the djinn raised one bound hand in a slow gesture.

"Sleep," he ordered, and the mannequin fell silent, and grew still, as though its strings had suddenly been cut. It started to topple over and Foris was suddenly beside it, lowering it quickly to the ground to lay against the stones like some child's cast-off toy. It did not look even the slightest bit alive. My life for that, thought Alice. And amended it immediately: my life for _him_. Her businessman's mind weighed the choice, pondered it, pronounced it an acceptable bargain. Maybe not the best choice I've ever made, thought Alice, but hardly the worst, either. Too late to be second guessing, at any rate.

The djinn looked to Alice; the heat in his eyes something she could not entirely fathom. Perhaps, thought Alice, this is what the prisoner sees when he opens the door leading to the tiger.

"As you wish," the djinn purred, rising smoothly from the floor He glided to her side, laying one finger along the side of her throat, and if Alice could have brought herself to move, she would have been running. Instead, she merely watched his eyes as he pulled at her dress, exposing more of her skin to the chill of the air. The motion prickled memories; Alice had expected to see in Foris' gaze what she had seen in Canton, that night in the harbor which seemed half a lifetime ago. But Alice found no anger, nothing of the hatred or the desire to dominate that she had seen so frequently in her nightmares.

_He truly does not know what he does to us. Doesn't have even the slightest conception._

It was enough that she might have pitied him, in any other time or place.

The knife was back in Foris' hand; he was raising it and Alice ought to run. She ought to run, but she didn't. Tarrant needed something; this was the kindest way she could give it to him.

She might close her eyes, though. Closing her eyes might be good.

"Do you fear me, mistress?" the djinn asked, close enough that she could feel his breath against her cheek. Alice licked her lips once before the answer would come.

"Yes," she whispered.

"That seems very strange," said the djinn absently, reaching across her shoulder to pull a lock of hair away from her neck. Alice shuddered, and opened her eyes, the knife drawing her gaze like a magnet.

The djinn glanced at the knife once, and then back to Alice's face; her desperate blue eyes meeting his own red, untroubled ones. With a shrug, Foris abruptly vanished the knife.

Alice's eyes widened in comprehension a moment before the djinn buried his teeth into the bare skin of her throat.

* * *

_~Puffin's Note - Tarrant quotes extensively, if inaccurately, from the 'What a piece of work is man' speech from Hamlet. The song he later sings to Alice is, of course, Scarborough Fair, a traditional folk ballad. _

_Don't ever believe my estimates of how many chapters are left, because they are turning out to be persistently wrong. Yep, you guessed it, there are still two more chapters to go... although one of them may be posted separately from the main body of the story..._


	10. Interlude, with Dream

_Puffin's Note: if you are here looking for the updated chapters, then you are in the right place - this is where things start to diverge from the original draft. Step into my parlor, said the spider to the fly. Welcome back.  
_

* * *

**Interlude, with Dream**

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* * *

**

The dream came into the stone-walled room very quietly, as though she were afraid to draw too much attention to her entrance. The dream knew she ought not to come here, in the same way that she knew not to sneak downstairs after she'd been put to bed, or play in the mud while wearing her best petticoat. Those sorts of activities, the dream knew, inevitably led to someone becoming irritated. At her, usually. And while the dream was quite willing to endure a scolding as a natural consequence of getting what she wanted, she did not think that the occupant of the stone-walled room would be content with merely scolding her. Besides which, he had created her; it would not do to be ill-mannered towards him.

But, the dream reasoned, if she did not come _here_, there was nowhere else that she could go. She was merely a dream, after all, and that limited her options. Real creatures, the dream suspected, were not so constrained in their movements. But for the dream, it was here, or it was nowhere. The dream had been nowhere before, and she had not liked it at all. Therefore, the dream concluded, it had to be here, and she hoped that her creator would overlook the impropriety.

Her creator was still in the room when the dream slipped in, though he did not seem pay her any attention. He wore white robes, and the shining circlet glittered on his head. His arms were crossed and his head bowed, and he stood very still in the stone room. The stillness seemed somehow appropriate to the room, as if the room itself harbored a strange ambivalence towards the natural motions and transits of life. The torches on the wall still danced; the dream wondered how long they would continue to flicker before they too, became still. The djinn tapped restlessly at the iron bands at his wrists; only the small motions of his fingers showed that he was not merely a cleverly painted statue. His back was to the dream, and he did not turn around. Nevertheless, the dream made a low curtsey, thinking that she ought to be polite, even if she didn't think he was watching. She did not want him to send her away, so she was determined to be very prim, and proper, and entirely grown-up. Then perhaps he wouldn't mind if she stayed here. It wouldn't be for very long. Only until someone wished for her; only until she was real.

The dream wondered if perhaps she ought to slick down her hair; it had a distressing tendency to fly off in all directions unless properly contained. She ought to have thought of braiding it; she would have looked less raggedy. It was bad enough that she still didn't have any shoes. But she did not want to be accused of being fidgety, so she kept her hands clasped firmly in front of her. Instead, she merely looked around, trying to take in everything about the strange room at once.

The room was quite changed from how the dream remembered it. The water was gone, all of it, and in its place was a floor of worn, grey flagstones, illuminated by half a dozen torches bracketed to the low walls. To one side was a table, covered with what looked to be the remains of a substantial meal, and two low benches on either side. The door, of course, was where it always had been.

She remembered that there had once been people here; she remembered their voices. She remembered one of them had spoken to her, and he hadn't known her name. But the people were not here any longer, and the dream was troubled by their absence. She had not thought it possible to leave the room, and she did not know where they might have gone. They had broken the stillness for a little while, but then the stillness had come back. _Other_ things had come after them, the doll and the dead thing, but they had been nothing like. They did not speak to her, and rarely moved. The dream did not think the dead thing would make a very good playmate, and she did not wish to play with any doll that had such haunted eyes. There was no light in them, as though they were merely empty lanterns, stripped of their candles and drained of their oil. She wondered what they dreamed of, if indeed the doll and the dead thing dreamed at all. She had seen nothing at all to suggest that they did.

Her creator was hardly any livelier than his silent companions. The djinn was standing in front of the door, staring calmly at the tattered scraps of a half-finished dream that hung from the lintel. The dream wondered whether he might be in the process of making something, and hoped that she wasn't interrupting. (Although to be honest, the dream did not care if she was interrupting or not, as long as she wasn't scolded or sent away for doing so. Interrupting something sounded far more interesting than interrupting nothing at all.) However, Foris did not appear to be doing anything other than watching, standing as still and motionless as the door itself.

The dream was a little disappointed that the water was gone; she would have liked to try swimming, if it were deep enough. She glanced several times at the table of food, and thought about eating a bite or two, but it seemed rude somehow, to eat someone else's dinner without their permission. She wasn't hungry, but her feet were getting cold. Surely Foris wouldn't mind if she sat on the bench. Or perhaps if she asked very politely, her creator would wish her some shoes. She didn't mean to be skulking, and besides which, she was bored. If she were to be scolded, or turned out of the room, it would at least be something of a novelty.

Carefully, the dream walked towards the djinn, her bare feet tapping quietly against the stone floor. The dream half-expected him to turn around as she approached; he didn't. Wondering if perhaps she _was_ interrupting something, she stopped, suddenly unsure whether it was wise to come any further. She could wait. Just because he was the only thing in the room that might speak to her, didn't mean he _had_ to.

The worst he can do is to shout at me, the dream told herself. The dream did not know if that was true or not; she half-suspected that he could do quite a bit worse. She crept closer. Another few steps and she could hear him breathing, a momentary flutter of air in an otherwise silent room. He must know that she was behind him, but he still hadn't moved.

"Will you tell me a story?" the dream asked suddenly.

"I do not tell very good stories," replied the djinn in a low voice. "All stories in this room end the same way."

With those words, he turned away from his contemplation of the door, stalking to the table and dropping heavily onto a bench. He leaned back against the table, as though stretching at an ache in his shoulders. "Let me see. Once upon a time, there were many stories. The stories belonged to kings and princes; long ago, such creatures came before me, and I listened to the tales their hearts told me. Such stories were meaningless, full of their own fretting, transitory mortal agonies, but they were stories, nonetheless. Everyone who came here had such stories, and such dreams."

"Shall people like that be coming again soon?" the dream asked, walking carefully up to the table.

The djinn did not immediately reply, merely raising a hand to trace the filigree leaves of his circlet. "They may yet," he said roughly. "_I_ still exist; and they may yet come. The sons of my builders may starve me, may forget me and lock me away, but I -"

Foris broke off abruptly, dropping his hand to his lap. The djinn gestured sharply, snatched a goblet out of the air and brought it to his lips, then just as quickly returned the glass to the table without drinking it. He lowered his head, and the dream heard his breathing again, a low stuttering sigh. He might have been a hooded falcon, thought the dream suddenly, wings pinioned and feathers clipped, still remembering the death-struggle of the field-mouse.

"What happens if your princes don't come back?"

The djinn raised his head, red-rimmed eyes meeting the dream's gaze. "We're forgotten," he said.

"Does it hurt?"

"On the contrary," said the djinn, but his mouth twisted as he said the words. "It can be peaceful, at first. There are certainly fewer demands on one's time."

The djinn turned back to her, drumming his fingers on the iron bracelets adorning his wrists, his face falling into an expression as bland and flawless as ice.

"Creatures such as yourself shall want for employment here. You shall not be called for, and you are under no obligation to remain," said the djinn at length. "I could, if you wish, return you to the place you were before you were summoned. It wouldn't hurt in the slightest," he added, in a tone that was evidently meant to be comforting.

The dream hadn't even considered the possibility that it might hurt until the djinn had told her it wouldn't. She regarded the prospect with a certain dismay. "If I go back, I won't be a dream anymore," she said.

The dream didn't think she'd asked a question, but the djinn answered it as if it was.

"No," said the djinn lightly. "You shall be one spark among many such sparks, one fragment of the infinite power that creates our worlds. You shall be a part of everything that ever was, or is, or shall one day be. It is not an entirely bad thing to be, in my opinion."

The dream shook her head. "I'll wait," she said, and looked around the room sharply, as though the man she was waiting for might come strolling in at any moment. "He _is_ coming." That wasn't a question, either.

Strangely, the djinn's gaze flicked immediately to the glass-eyed doll; he regarded it for a long moment before replying. "Perhaps. But I must advise you, mortal wishes are not to be depended upon. Do not ever consider them to be permanent things."

"I'll wait," repeated the dream, and sat on the bench beside her creator, tucking her feet cross-legged under her skirt. A withered grape sat on the table beside her; the dream flicked at it with her finger, watching it spin like a marble. It rolled about the stone-grey surface for a moment, and fell still. The dream flicked it again.

Foris reached behind the dream and picked up a small grey box from the table – a box that the dream was quite sure hadn't been there a moment ago. Without even glancing at it, the djinn dropped it casually into the dream's lap. She caught it, running her fingers over stone, feeling the crisp edges of a carefully carved design.

"It's very pretty," said the dream uncertainly. She wasn't at all certain that it _was_ pretty, but it seemed the polite thing to say. The sides of the box were covered in an ivy design, grey leaves winding about each other in a tangled pattern. Written across the lid of the box was a short phrase in Latin, and it began with a very strange word carved in raised letters – AAA. Below it was carved, _Mitto tibi navem propa pvppiqve carentem_.

"You can read the letters," pronounced the djinn, and took a slow sip of wine. Curiously, the dream found that the words made sense, although she was sure they had been quite incomprehensible a moment ago.

_AAA I send you a ship without bow or stern_. The dream ran her fingers over the first word, the strange one, and immediately felt a tiny mechanism sliding under her fingertips. _DCC_, it now read. The first three letters were on wheels. Putting her hand to the mechanism, she spun the wheels. _EGO_, she spelled out. _I am_. Then she traced, _AMO_. _I love_. Tiring of this, the dream turned the box about in her fingers. Although she could see no latch or hinge, she could feel something rattling inside the box as she turned it.

"What is it?" the dream asked.

"It is a puzzle box," replied the djinn. "If it is your wish to remain here, you may as well have something with which to occupy yourself."

The dream knew that when adults said that, it usually meant _go away and stop bothering me_. Biting at her lip, she ran her fingers over the stone, feeling the tiny seams.

"How do you open it?" she asked.

"If it were easy to open, it would not be called a puzzle box," replied the djinn archly. "They are meant to require some small application of effort."

Personally, the dream thought she would have been happier if the djinn had simply given her a doll. But, perhaps solving the puzzle box would be more entertaining than she supposed.

"What is the puzzle?" the dream asked.

""You have heard of riddles, I suppose?"

"Yes," said the dream, bristling a little at the djinn's irritated tone. "Is that what this is? A riddle?"

"Precisely," replied the djinn. "And once you have guessed the answer, you form the word, and the box will open." The djinn gestured at the three letter wheels.

"It can't be a very hard riddle if the answer is only three letters," the dream pointed out.

"Then I am certain you shall have no trouble in solving it," Foris replied, and pointedly turned back to his wine goblet.

The dream turned back to the box, absently spinning the letter wheels with one finger. _Mitto tibi navem propa pvppiqve carentem_. I send you a ship without bow or stern. What sort of a ship could that be? Not a very useful ship, was the dream's first thought. If I were ever on a ship, I would want to be very sure that it had all of its proper ship parts. What sorts of ships don't have bows or sterns? A rowboat? No, that word's too long to fit; I can only use three letters. And it would be in Latin, wouldn't it?

An idea came to the dream, and she turned back to the djinn excitedly, bouncing the box on one knee.

"If the answer is only three letters, then it would be very easy to try all of the different combinations and see which one is the answer! I wouldn't have to solve the riddle at all!"

The djinn turned back to her, and raised an eyebrow. "You may certainly attempt to open the box by brute force, as it were," he drawled. "However, there are over seventeen thousand possible three-letter solutions. Were I in the habit of dispensing advice, I would recommend a more elegant approach."

"Oh," said the dream, propping an elbow on the knee of her skirt and looking at the letter wheels with a newfound respect. Perhaps this was going to be a difficult riddle after all. The dream hoped that whatever was inside the box, it would be worth the trouble of opening it. She thought the box a very strange sort of present; she wondered why he had given it to her. Her creator obviously thought she was intelligent enough to solve the riddle; it pleased the dream to think that he might consider her clever. The dream only hoped that she _was_ able to open it. If the djinn thought her clever, then she didn't want to disappoint him, even if she had to try all those thousands of words. Surely she could open it without going to all that trouble?

The dream drummed her fingers on the lid of the box, and thought, _ships_. What sort of Latin words related to ships? _Linter_ – that was too long. _Mare_? Not right either.

The dream wondered if the letters were themselves supposed to look like a ship, but she couldn't see how she was supposed to make a ship picture out of Bs and Ps and Qs. The dream tried rows of Vs and Ms and Ws, on the supposition that they looked vaguely wave-ish and sea-like. None of these combinations produced any apparent result from the box.

The dream glanced once at the djinn, who was studying his wineglass and appeared to be paying her not the least attention.

The dream turned back to the box, resting her chin in her hand and looking at the riddle with a sullen expression. _Mitto tibi navem propa pvppiqve carentem.__I send you a ship without bow or stern. A ship without bow or stern. A ship. I send you a ship._ Stupid ship, anyway, thought the dream, and I don't care who sent it.

A ship without bow or stern. _Navem_ meant ship. All of a sudden, the dream saw the answer, as though the letters on the box had suddenly rearranged themselves, the answer jumping right out of the stones. _Navem_ meant ship. _Navem _without its front or back would be… Carefully, the dream brushed the stone letters of the dial, turning the three wheels one after another. She was biting her lip; the dream knew that this had to be the answer. _AVE_, she spelled out; _navem_ without its first or last letter. _Ave_; greetings.

The box the djinn had given her merely said, hello.

As soon as the last letter rolled into place, the dream felt a shudder along the length of the box. The stone surface seemed to quiver, and with a sudden finality, the entire box collapsed in on itself, disintegrating into a pile of grey dust pooling in the lap of her skirt. Something gleamed in the dust; the dream combed her fingers through the pile, the stone fragments running through her fingers like sand. Something warm and shimmering touched her hand; she pulled it carefully free.

The dream examined the key curiously, wondering what, exactly, it was meant to unlock. She turned to the djinn, but he was already looking at her, a brittle smile flickering across his pale face.

"I believe," said the djinn, "That it is time you gave this to its proper owner."

* * *

_Credit where credit is due: _

_Thanks to the Archimedes' Laboratory website for the riddle on the djinn's puzzle box. _


	11. Chapter 10

_Puffin's Note: If you are coming back to this story specifically for the updated chapters, you'll want to go one chapter back before you read this. There is an interlude before this, which also contains new material.  
_

_As per popular demand, this chapter directly follows the last moment with Alice and Foris in the locked room. This section went through a painful number of drafts before I nailed down exactly what needs to happen. I'm still not entirely happy with it, but it's time to post the d*&n thing and get on to the next bits._

* * *

Something important had happened while he slept, and it was very important that Tarrant not remember what it was. It seemed to Tarrant that if he did remember, everything about his current predicament would only get infinitely worse.

Not that Tarrant's situation was all that good to begin with. In fact, all things considered, 'good' couldn't honestly be applied to anything about the past several days.

He still couldn't see anything when he awoke. Strangely, he didn't remember falling asleep, though he must have done so, for he was lying with his cheek digging into the stone floor; he had the impression that he had been dreaming. Tarrant thought that someone in the dream had been asking for him, though who it was or what they had wanted, the hatter did not know. Perhaps Tarrant was _still_ dreaming, and this person was waiting for an answer. But Tarrant did not know what question he had been asked.

It was entirely too dark here, the hatter thought. Without the sun, day and night had quickly become muddled; now it seemed that sleep and wakefulness were becoming just as blurred. If he could open his eyes, the hatter thought he might be able to sort it out. But opening his eyes didn't seem to make any difference at all. Tarrant had thought the room was dark before, lit by a dim glow that seemed able to mount only a token protest against the ever-present shadows. Now the glow was gone entirely; in its absence, Tarrant found that he missed it greatly. In its place was a blackness so thick that it almost seemed a presence in its own right, something with weight, that clung to the walls like a tapestry. The hatter had the strangest feeling, that if he spoke aloud in such a place, the darkness might choose to reply. (Because someone is waiting for an answer. But what was the question?) But Tarrant did not think he wanted to hear anything the darkness might tell him. The darkness' silence was eerie enough; he did not want to encourage it with speech of his own.

Carefully, Tarrant freed one arm from the pocket of his jacket, and waved a hand in front of his face. He felt the breeze of its passing as a faint flicker against his cheek, but he couldn't see it at all, not even so much as a flicker. The hatter wondered if he might be underwater. But he wasn't wet; he felt that this somehow ruled out the prospect of his having drowned.

The joints in his fingers were still unaccountably stiff. Wondering if he might have chilled then, the hatter tucked his hands under the front of his waistcoat, nestling them firmly into his armpits. Could he have frozen them? The hatter didn't think so, but it would explain the stiffness. But the hatter did not feel cold, and several minutes of attempting to warm his fingers produced no appreciable affect.

Tarrant wished very much that Alice were still with him, instead of away in whatever place she'd disappeared to now. The hatter recognized it as a Selfish Idea immediately; surely Alice would be better off anywhere else than here. Where had she gone, exactly? Tarrant felt a sudden twinge at the question. (_Something important had happened, and he ought not to remember it._) Strange; the hatter thought that by now, he would have become used to the girl's comings and goings. By now, he ought to be accustomed to being alone. But, it is always harder to be alone when one is alone in the dark.

Something important had happened while he slept. Tarrant was sure of that much - but Alice had left before it had happened, hadn't she? She had gone through the door; she had promised him that she would. And Alice wouldn't have broken a promise, not to him. At least, Tarrant didn't think she would. _He_ wouldn't break a promise to _her_, and it seemed that such an important thing as promise-keeping ought to be reciprocal, or there wouldn't be any promises in the first place. Alice had promised, so she would have left, just as she ought to. Just as they had planned.

And just as they'd planned, Alice wouldn't be coming back.

Which left Tarrant alone to determine what he was going to do about himself.

Cautiously, Tarrant rolled onto his belly. The noise still caught him off guard, a metallic clatter, as though something had dropped to the floor along with him. He wanted to cover his ears, but he didn't want to touch his own head if he could help it. If he didn't touch it, he could pretend that he still had hair. Tarrant thought it curious that such a small detail should bother him, given what else had happened. Blind, bald, and crawling; he might as well be an old man, ancient enough to outlive his usefulness.

Have I outlived my usefulness, Tarrant wondered. I did something very useful for Alice not so long ago, and that should have been the end of it. But it wasn't. It wasn't the end at all.

The hatter did not know if this was a comforting notion, or not. Was there more for him to do, then? Or was it that his story was already finished, and he was merely waiting for the ending to catch up with him? Tarrant did care for that sort of waiting; he had lived through too much of that already, in recent days.

Was there anything to be waiting for? He was not waiting for Alice; Tarrant was absolutely certain she wouldn't be back. Who else, then? (Someone had been asking for him.) There was the Door itself, or the creature who inhabited it. Tarrant had never seen it, but he remembered its voice - precise, mocking, and ironical. _He is trying to remember that he is human - which he isn't. _The hatter did not wish to speak to it; he could hardly think that it would want to speak to him, either. Aside from the djinn, there were walls, and stones, and a perpetually locked door.

Hardly the furnishings Tarrant would have chosen, for a room in which to spend the remainder of his life. He might as well be inhabiting a tomb.

That appeared to decide things very definitively – he shan't stay. He shan't stay; there is no reason to do so, and there is one road still open to him. The long grass grows in its fields; the hawthorn trees guard its borders. The wind will be blowing in the tops of the branches; perhaps the snow has already melted. He will know, soon enough.

Raising one hand, Tarrant flicks his stiffened fingers, in what might almost have been a gesture of farewell. Crossing his arms over his breast, the hatter allows a curious expression to creep over his face. A smile, it might be. Possibly even a laugh. A moment later, the expression flickers out like a light, and Tarrant is somewhere else entirely.

* * *

Tarrant came to himself crouched on hands and knees (proper hands and knees; and he could see them), shuddering in the long grass. The hatter looked up, startled and half-expecting to see the domed ceiling of the locked room arching over his head. Instead, he found himself staring up into the branches of a very familiar-looking tree. It was a hawthorn, ragged but still full-leaved, with a curious fork in its branches. The sky was dark, a thick sort of pervading twilight hanging over the tree, thick enough to blot out the highest boughs. For a moment, Tarrant did not known whether the tree was growing up into the darkness, or whether the darkness was growing down into the tree. Here and there, the stars were beginning to peer out between the branches. They were strangely red, as though they were not even stars at all, but bits of flame.

Tarrant thought it looked very much like the end of the world.

Red stars or not, the hatter was reasonably certain he had ended up in the right place; he could just make out the dark double line of the paddock fence, running along the bottom of the hill.

Letting out a sigh of relief, Tarrant threw himself down into a boneless heap at the base of the hawthorn tree. He could feel tufts of thick grass brushing against his cheeks; the blades were too close for him to seem them properly. They were green, though it was so dark he barely saw the color, but he knew that they was real; the color would be vivid, and alive. His trees still held their leaves; his grass still grew beneath them. Here, if nowhere else, things were as they ought to be.

Tentatively, Tarrant felt along the back of his neck; he was immensely relieved to feel the springy, matted curls of his own hair. Unexpectedly, his thumb brushed against velvet; Tarrant snatched at the brim and pulled the hat into his lap at once, letting the pale ribbon trail across the backs of his hands. The hatter sighed once, rubbing his cheek lightly against the velvet top. If this bit of himself had come back, then Tarrant trusted that everything else of consequence had been returned to him as well.

Just to be sure, the hatter spent the next several minutes doing a comprehensive examination of all of his various parts, just to make sure that he had remembered them properly. The hair, of course, and the top hat - first time in nearly a week that he'd seen the dratted thing. Arms and fingers, legs and feet, and toes, he thought, wiggling them inside of his shoes just to make sure they were accounted for. Shoes, indeed - something else that Tarrant had dearly missed; it had been too cold to go about bare footed. Hats and shoes, thought Tarrant happily; everything is better with the proper accessories.

The hatter allowed his eyes to slip closed for a moment, basking in the blissful sensation of owning a proper, Tarrant-shaped body again. It was good to know that he still remembered what he was supposed to look like - even if he didn't look like it anywhere except inside his own head. His own head would suit him, for the moment. It might even suit him for ever; it was certainly better than what awaited him in the real world. _That_ body wasn't his, and was very nearly useless – blind, and weak, and doddering. He had no great attachment to such a shape; he could walk away from it and not come back. Let it fall to pieces; he did not care for it, nor care what happened to it. Even if that shape had been a gift of Alice's.

And what of Alice herself? Tarrant had made a habit of firmly remaining in the real world through these past few days primarily for her benefit, but Alice was - gone - now. (_Gone, wasn't she? What other word had he been thinking just then?)_ She wouldn't be coming back; he need not linger in reality for fear of missing an appointment. That appeared to decide the matter very definitively. He wouldn't go back. He would stay here, quite happily, for as long as he possibly could. Which would probably be until the body out there was worn down enough that it stopped being a body anymore. It was bound to happen sooner or later, regardless of whether Tarrant was actually conscious of the process or not.

"Well," said Tarrant, and plucked the hat from his lap, settling it carefully onto his head. He tilted his head, testing whether the hat was likely to fall off, and found himself staring up through the leaves of the hawthorn tree, at the red stars overhead.

The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes, the hatter thought suddenly - an odd thing to think of. There weren't any princes, and no one had died. Surely he could think of a better one.

Do not go gentle into that good night. But somehow, the hatter did not think this last one was true anymore.

Feeling that he had come to some decision, the hatter got to his feet, brushed a bit of grass from his waistcoat, and started down to the word paddock. He could see the gate, hanging ajar as he had last left it. Tarrant was heartened to see that there was already a substantial group of words milling together on the far side of the fence. They were standing close to one another; in the darkness he could hardly tell one shape from another. Their ears were pricked and held high on their heads; they showed no indication that they were in any way ready to bed down for the evening. That was unusual, but Tarrant was pleased they were still awake; he very much wished for their company. Perhaps one or two could be prevailed upon to stay up with him tonight. Good creatures, they were; he was pleased to see so many of them had found their way back.

Tarrant reached the gate, and allowed himself a moment to simply lean against the wood, savoring the feeling of the weathered grain against his hands. It was only a memory, as everything here was, but that did not mean he couldn't enjoy the sensation. There weren't many other things left for him to enjoy, after all. Eventually, Tarrant pulled away from the fence, and stepped into the paddock's small clearing. As he looked across the field, the cause of the words' agitation became clear.

A word pony was lying in the middle of the paddock with its throat torn out.

The ground was trembling; there was no other explanation for why Tarrant could barely walk to short distance to the stricken word, why he tumbled to the ground in a heap the moment he reached its side. The other words scattered as he passed; Tarrant hardly noticed them. They didn't matter; the only word that mattered was on the ground before him, dark-eyed and pale-haired, and Tarrant did not understand why it was lying so still.

Very gently, the hatter touched its flank, feeling its fur stiff and matted against his fingers, flinching away from the cool skin as though he'd been burned. Water was pooling under its neck, flaking and sticky all at once, looking black as ink in the dim light.

"Get up!" Tarrant shouted, and he was shaking it, pale hair sliding limply across the word's neck. Tarrant knew his paddock; he knew how his own mind worked, and this wasn't true. It couldn't be true. "You are only dead here if I believe you are dead there. And you aren't. Get up."

The word's blank blue eyes merely stared fixedly back at him. "Please," said the hatter. The word didn't move. "You're lying," shouted Tarrant, and if he couldn't cajole the word back to him, he would just have to force it onto its feet. "This can't have happened - I did everything I could! Everything!" Tarrant locked his fingers in the yellow mane and pulled. The word's head came up limply, the neck bent back on itself as though it were broken.

"Don't do this!" the hatter shouted, curling his fingers tightly in the word's yellow hair. "Don't leave me alone!" The word's head flopped limply, a parody of a nod, its blue eyes focused on something impossibly far away. "Look at me!" the hatter ordered it, shaking its head sharply, but the word didn't even blink. Its empty gaze washed over the hatter like ice; Tarrant was terrified that if he were to meet its eyes, those eyes would tell him something he could not bear to hear. Tarrant let go of the word; its head dropped limply to the dirt.

The tears were blurring his vision; for a horrible instant it was like being blind. Tarrant clawed at his eyes - no reason to be crying. No reason at all. Of course the word wasn't getting up, the way he was shouting at the poor creature. Probably he was frightening it. That wouldn't do. Wouldn't do at all.

Tarrant knelt at the word's head and tentatively stroked its nose. When the word did not object, Tarrant moved closer, lying down on the blood-soaked dirt by the word's head, cradling it carefully in his arms.

"I did everything I could. Wasn't it enough?" he asked it quietly. "Tell me what you need. Anything you need, I'll do it. Anything at all. But you have to get up."

Tarrant reached out to stroke the word's cheek, and saw that his hand was covered in blood. Soaked with it, up to the elbow, from where he had been cradling the word. A memory pounced; he remembered when he had last seen his hands like this.

He'd been holding the knife; and he'd been sobbing in relief that he was finished; he'd done it, and every hurt afflicting him would very soon cease. He remembered looking at his hands and they were dripping with blood. Just as they were now. It was the last thing he'd seen before he'd... Before he'd d-

Then, something was dying. Now, something had d-

"Not your fault," whispered Tarrant, slowly pulling his hands away, and wrapping them about his own shoulders. The hatter rolled away from the word, feeling the wet dirt of the paddock smearing across his forehead. "It isn't your fault," he said again. Tarrant did not know who he was talking to. The word couldn't hear him anymore. And if Tarrant was talking to himself, he knew he was probably lying.

Tarrant lay beside the word for several minutes, not talking, one hand resting lightly on the word's foreleg. He would still remember her; he had to - even if he could only remember her like this. No one else would remember at all- no one else would ever know what had happened. They were still trapped, even after all they had done, somewhere in the distant reality of the locked room. They were still there – _she_ was still there, a girl alone in a stone chamber, slowly becoming her own bones. Someone might find her, and wonder at them. Wonder who she was, or how she had died. Someone might wonder at the strange creature lying beside it – wooden, and metal, and looking almost human.

But the room, and the dark miracles it contained, had been sealed off a long time ago; Tarrant did not think anyone would come. No one would wonder. No one would know.

* * *

The hatter became aware by degrees that something was pushing at his shoulder. Tarrant did not want to see it, did not want to see anything at all, and he curled himself more tightly into a ball. The something was persistent, nuzzling at his neck and head; Tarrant slapped at it blindly, hoping it would take the hint and leave him alone. The something gave an offended snort, and nipped him sharply on the shoulder.

Tarrant yelped, more out of surprise than anything else, and rolled onto his back, kicking blindly in the direction of the bite. A word was standing over him, dancing easily out of range of Tarrant's foot. It dropped awkwardly onto its knees and licked the hatter hard across the face.

Tarrant knew this word; he had seen it many times in the long years since the Jabberwock had come. The word had first come to him when the embers of his village were still burning; it had followed him, nipping at his heels as he staggered through the Tugley Wood, in the weeks immediately following. It had forced him to hold his tongue in the dungeons of Salazen Grum. It had been with him every day that he had been waiting for their Champion to return.

Hope, it was called, and Tarrant thought the creature a perpetual nuisance. Nevertheless, the word was company, if only of a troublesome sort.

Tarrant let himself go limp, leaning against the creature's flank, emptily submitting himself to the word's slobbery comfort. It nuzzled at his face; he reached up and slapped it gently on the neck.

"Good word," he told it hoarsely; the word whickered in reply. Tarrant was hardly surprised that the word was here; the creature seemed to make a habit of pestering him at the worst possible times. The word snuffled about his head and face, then pulled back for a moment, as though it were inspecting him. Tarrant imagined he looked a right mess, wrinkled and covered in mud, but at the moment he couldn't bring himself to care. The word, on the other hand, looked despicably well-groomed; its gray coat smooth and shiny, its white mane falling across its shoulders like a cape. Hope blinked once, then turned towards the fallen word and blinked again, a slow flick of its long, curling lashes. It gave no other indication that it was troubled in the least by what it saw.

"It was kind of you to come," whispered the hatter. "But I think you ought to go now. This hasn't anything to do with you."

The word Hope looked sadly down its long nose, and sighed, its flanks moving in and out like bellows. The creature pulled itself easily to its feet, shaking out its long mane, and gave the hatter an irritated look. The hatter knew that expression, and he folded his arms stubbornly across his chest.

"Don't be a nuisance," Tarrant told the word, trying to sound stern. "Go off and bother someone else. I shall have nothing to do with you from now on, do you understand? It's all gone to pieces, and you can't help at all."

The word snorted, and calmly lowered its nose to Tarrant's face, licking him soundly across the cheeks.

"And I'm not crying," the hatter added, incorrectly. "Now, let me alone."

Tarrant did not harbor any great faith that the word would do so; Hope had never been a particularly obliging creature. The word looked away, as though it meant to do as it was bidden, turned suddenly, and lunged for Tarrant's hat. Tarrant tried to grab it, but the word was quicker; it pranced backwards with the brim clamped firmly between its teeth.

"Drop it," said the hatter hoarsely. The word merely lowered its ears, sliding its jaws back and forth as though ruminating on the merits of velveteen as an edible commodity. "You are a very wicked creature, do you know that? Let go this instant!"

Tarrant lunged at the word, not sure if he were hoping to snatch at the trailing ribbon, or perhaps clobber the disobedient creature across the nose. He missed on both counts, only barely catching himself before he fell face-first onto the ground. As Tarrant pulled himself to his feet, the word shook itself, setting its grey mane dancing, and the pale ribbon of the hat dancing with it.

"All right, I'm on my feet! Is this what you wanted?" Tarrant shouted. "I ought to muzzle you, do you hear me? I'll drive you out of the paddock and bar the gate! You're far more trouble than you're worth, and you always have been!"

Very calmly, the word dropped its head, lowering the hat carefully to the ground. Tarrant came forward and snatched it up immediately, noting that the brim was the slightest bit soggy where the word had been mouthing it. He settled the hat firmly onto his head, tossing the ribbon over his shoulder, but before he could say anything else to the irksome word, it turned away, purposefully, glancing once through the curtain of its mane as it left him, the briefest glitter of dark, liquid eyes.

Had the word remained, he would have scolded it; had it merely left him, he would have turned his back and ignored its departure. But that halfway glance seemed to hold him where he stood; besides which, he knew what lay on the ground behind him, and had no great desire to turn around. So he watched as the word padded away, its head held so low that the creature seemed to be at some pains to keep from treading upon its own mane. The word shook its head, sending the mane flowing over its shoulders like a mantle, but it did not look back again.

The paddock gate was still open, the hatter recalled, and something prickled at the back of Tarrant's neck. It would be just like the word to wander off; the creature seemed to have no conception that there were things beyond the paddock that might wish it harm.

If it gets itself into trouble, Tarrant thought, it shall just have to sort itself out. Stupid thing, acts like nothing in the world could ever hurt it. If it ever finds out differently, that's hardly a concern of mine. Might even teach it a lesson, because it certainly doesn't ever listen to me. Let it run off. I won't be troubled in the slightest. No, I shan't be troubled at all.

But Tarrant was still watching the word, and the word was still walking towards the fence. The darker grey of the word's body was beginning to meld with the dark of the sky, leaving only a sort of silhouette of mane, tail, and hocks. The light was too dim, and the meadow too large; soon the word would be out of sight completely.

"Little fiend," Tarrant muttered, and putting his fingers to his lips, he whistled sharply. His fingers were still covered with mud and god-knows-what else; they tasted miserably of copper and of earth, and he wiped his hand fiercely against his trouser leg. The word had turned round, almost prancing for a moment, and flicked its tail. Tarrant walked towards it, half-thinking that the word might decide to scamper off again before he reached it. But the word waited patiently, ears pricked at an irritatingly cheerful angle, as though the creature had always expected that Tarrant would call it back. As Tarrant came up to it, the word shoved its snout against the hatter's chest in a highly familiar manner; he could feel the damp warmth of its breath through the fabric. A moment later, the word was _leaning_ against him in the attitude of a particularly ingratiating dog, as though it wished to be scratched about the ears.

He wouldn't apologize, Tarrant told himself; he needn't tell the creature anything that might encourage future disobedience. He needn't apologize, even if he had shouted at the creature. Tarrant doubted that any amount of harsh words would ever make an impression on the word; it had always seemed entirely immune to any number of disagreeable circumstances.

He might feel grateful, that the word had stayed. Yes, Tarrant supposed that he might do that. After all, it wasn't entirely the word's fault that it was so intractable. If he had used a firmer hand with it at the start, perhaps it wouldn't have grown so willful. Not the word's fault if he could never bring himself to discipline it properly.

"I'm pleased you've decided to behave yourself," the hatter said, placing a hand on the word's shaggy forelock. Tarrant had wished to see some sign of contrition in the word's manner, but the word merely flicked its ears once, as though it had expected that Tarrant would forgive it, sooner or later. Insufferable creature, Tarrant thought. Perhaps he would be better off if he simply turned the word out of the paddock altogether. But he couldn't quite bring himself to do that, not when there were so few words here that mattered anymore. At the thought, the hatter looked about him suddenly, as if he feared to discover that he and Hope were entirely alone in the field.

Such words as remained were scattered across the meadow, barely visible as silhouettes in the twilight, silent and nearly motionless. Only an occasional flick of a head, or stamp of a foot, betrayed that there was any life to them at all.

A graveyard, Tarrant suddenly thought, is a place where people carve the words for things they will never see again. It felt as though at any moment, the words might bow their heads, and become such stones. Though there was no breeze, the hatter felt a sudden chill in the air.

"Walk with me," he said, and slapped the word Hope on the flank. Slowly, the word and its master walked through the field, the long grass parting before them as they went.

* * *

The word was the first to notice that something had changed. It jerked its head up sharply; Tarrant grabbed onto its mane, certain that the disobedient word was going to kick, or bite, or do something equally unpleasant. It took him a moment to realize that the word was actually _looking_ at something, staring fixedly towards the middle of the paddock. The word whickered softly, stretching its head as far forward as it could, its ears alert and listening. Curiously, the hatter looked through the darkness to see what it was the word had spotted.

A young girl was standing barefoot in the middle of the paddock, with a fistful of flowers clutched to her chest. The hair and the flowers were pale; the dress, in better light, might have been green. She was staring wide-eyed at the words as though she had never seen them before. No, not all of the words - one _particular_ word, the one lying still in the trampled earth. The girl was walking towards it, flowers clenched tightly in both hands. Tarrant nearly called out to her; the cry stuck in his throat, as though the very sound might cause the girl, ghost-like, to vanish. The hatter did not know how she had come here, or what she was doing. He very well knew who she was; how she had gotten here hardly mattered, _that_ she was here seemed tremendously important. He desperately hoped that she did not realize what particular word it was, laying so still on the ground. She was standing before it, the bouquet of flowers held limply at her side. He couldn't see her face; she didn't seem to be crying, merely standing close by it, and holding very still.

Tarrant crept closer, trying to ignore the sensation that to startle her would be to make her disappear, vaguely aware of the word Hope at his shoulder like a gray shadow. The girl still hadn't moved, but her fingers were crushing the stems of the flowers with the tightness of her grip. She held her head high; the hatter could see the tight lines of her shoulders even through the ruffles of her dress. Tarrant wished he knew what her name was.

"Darling," he said, and apparently that was all that was needed. The girl turned towards him, scuffing at the dirt with a muddled look on her face, as though she had not made up her mind whether she should cry or not. "Darling," Tarrant said again, softer, and held out his hands. He had no idea what he was going to tell her.

It seemed he did not need to tell her anything at all; she slid into his arms as though she belonged there, burying her face into his waistcoat. Tarrant stroked her hair, her skin surprisingly warm, and gently steered the girl away from the stricken word. She hiccupped once; Tarrant was mortally afraid that she was going to start crying. There were many things that the hatter might say to comfort her; unfortunately, Tarrant didn't think any of them were actually true. The girl hiccupped again, louder. Alice had never done this when she was a small girl, had she? Not that Tarrant could remember, at any rate.

However, Alice as a small girl had been remarkably easy to distract...

"Would you like to meet one of them?" he asked, dropping to his knees beside her. "One of the words, I mean?"

The girl nodded, very solemnly; her green eyes large in her pale face. The tears were hanging in her eyes; she brushed at them with the back of her hand.

"All right," said the hatter, settling an arm across her shoulder and looking critically at the words in the immediate vicinity. No few of them had drifted closer to the hatter and the girl, sniffing curiously at the unexpected arrival. In the darkness, they were little more than looming silhouettes. They were perhaps, the hatter thought, not the most comforting thing be introducing to a child, and he had to find a word that was even-tempered enough to behave itself. Usually the words were quite trustworthy, but it had been a trying few days for them; they were not in the best of sorts. He peered at the words standing closest, trying to make out which was which.

"Quilt!" he called, and whistled sharply. A few yards away, a patchy-looking word lifted its head and flicked its ears. The creature snorted, ambling towards its master with a shuffling, swaybacked gait. Stopping a few yards away, the word Quilt flicked its ears again, looking at the pair of them expectantly.

"Go on, then," he said to the girl. She met his eye for a moment; the beginnings of a smile creeping into her face. A moment later, she had slipped out of his arms and was walking up to the threadbare word. As little as she was, the girl barely came up to Quilt's shoulders, but she didn't appear to be afraid of it. The girl put out a hand; the word let out a wheezing sort of snort and looked at her dubiously. She laughed, the sound as thrilling and unexpected as a firecracker; Quilt lowered its head, and diffidently allowed her to pat it on the nose. The word sniffed at her fingers, apparently deciding that the girl required a full head-to-toe inspection. Quilt snuffled at her petticoats, then at her face, while the girl covered her head in her arms and giggled.

The word seemed intrigued by the flowers; it lowered its head, managing to nip off one of the buds before the girl pulled the bouquet away, holding it behind her back. Unperturbed, Quilt turned its attention to her skirt, catching one panel between its teeth and mouthing happily at the hem. Just at the moment that Tarrant decided he had better intervene, the girl grabbed her skirt, pulling the hem away from the inquisitive word, and hastily backing away from the creature. She tripped, dropping her bundle of flowers as she flung her arms out to catch herself, and jumped back to her feet almost immediately, glaring at an unrepentant Quilt.

"Is he hungry?" she asked.

"No it isn't," said Tarrant, with a significant look at the word. "It's just being troublesome."

Quilt rolled its shoulders at the reproof, looking abashedly at its hooves. The girl picked up her bouquet of flowers, carefully straightened a few of the broken stems, and walked back over to Quilt, though Tarrant noticed she had taken the precaution of bundling her skirts together in a fist.

Tarrant watched his daughter investigating the word with a feeling not unlike delight. The hatter was well aware that the inside of his head was not always a welcoming place. It could be cold, wet, and lonely; sometimes it could be frightening, even to Tarrant himself, who was nominally in charge of the place. But it did not frighten his daughter. She wasn't afraid of the words. One might infer, she wasn't afraid of him.

Tarrant would have loved her for that alone, if he weren't completely sure that he loved her already.

Tarrant heard a whicker from his shoulder, and turned to see the word Hope sniffing at his sleeve, with the air of a creature who expects to be scolded. The hatter pulled it close, burying his face in the feather-soft mane.

"You're a good word," he told it, kissing it lightly between the ears. "Though I don't know why you've stayed. You ought to have left a long time ago."

The word blinked slowly at him, as though it knew that the answer to that question, and a great many others, was actually quite obvious.

Hands resting lightly on the word's shoulders, Tarrant looked up to the sky over his paddock. A thin twilight lingered along the horizon, the sky glowing with a last illusion of daylight; the red stars were already as visible as if it were full dark. It was, Tarrant thought, probably the very last night of the world. Or at least, the very last night of his particular world. Some say the world will end in fire, and some in ice. Well, the world could do what it liked. As for Tarrant, he had the whole rest of his life to spend with his daughter. Not that the rest of his life was likely to be a long span of time, but he would have to make it suffice.

The long-suffering Quilt had lain down; the girl was now sitting between the word's shoulder blades, grabbing its mane as if she were holding a bridle. Quilt was resolutely ignoring the girl's attempts to get it to stand up and gallop, though this hardly appeared to dampen the girl's enthusiasm for trying. To the hatter's knowledge, the swaybacked word had never galloped in its life; upon catching Tarrant's eye, the word shot a beseeching look at its master. Walking towards the pair, Tarrant leaned down stiffly and patted the word's head; Quilt sniffed hopefully at the hatter's pockets. The hatter was sorry he hadn't anything to give the creature; it certainly deserved an apple or three for putting up with the indignities being inflicted on it.

The girl slipped down from the word's shoulders as quickly as she had scampered onto them, placing her hand in the hatter's own with an entirely unconscious familiarity. Not wishing to trouble their easy silence with conversation, Tarrant began to walk, picking a direction at random, ambling hand-in-hand through the twilight. After some minutes, the girl stopped short, dropped the hatter's hand, and began rummaging in the pockets of her skirt.

"He told me I needed to give you this," said the girl, and pulled something out of her pocket. "He said you had to have it, because of something my mother asked him to do."

She was holding a key - long, intricate, and silver, shining faintly in the permanent evening of the word paddock. The girl held it up happily; from her expression, she clearly expected Tarrant to be delighted with her gift. Numbly, he took the key from her outstretched hand, running his fingers along the smooth surface, feeling its weight with a detached sort of curiosity. It's very light, he thought. You would think it would weigh more. After all, it only cost someone their very life to get it.

The girl's smile was slipping from her face. Tarrant took stock of his own expression - blurred eyes, twisted mouth, shuddering shoulders - and abruptly turned away. He needed to compose himself, for her sake if nothing else, but he could not do it quickly. Very gently, the hatter put his hand on her shoulder, resolutely keeping his face turned away.

Tarrant knew what this key was, he knew who had sent it to him, and he knew what it meant. It meant Alice was dead. And the creature that had killed her had been speaking with his daughter.

"Why did he send you?" Tarrant asked in a rough voice.

"He can't come in here unless you let him in," the girl said, as though she were explaining something he ought to already know. "I'm yours already, so I can go wherever I want."

"If you're mine, how do you know him?" Tarrant asked. Several of the closest words pricked up their ears in alarm at his voice, slinking away with lowered heads and rounded shoulders.

"I'm a dream," said the girl faintly. "If I ever exist, he'll be the one who creates me."

Something fierce and volatile awoke in the hatter with all the suddenness of a lighted match. This was his family; the djinn had no right to touch it. The creature had no right to speak to his daughter; no right to imply that the girl was anything other than Tarrant's own. He didn't need wishes to make her real; he was perfectly capable of managing that part on his own, thank you very much. All he needed was Alice.

Alice. One of many things that he didn't have. One of many things he was never going to see again.

Tarrant let his hand fall from the girl's shoulder, managing to get a few paces away from her before walking became an impossibility, and he dropped heavily to his knees.

I could have waited, he thought viciously. Not even two weeks without her, and I couldn't manage. I could have sent her a goddamned letter. I could have left her alone entirely and visited the Alice-word here in the paddock every Sunday. But I couldn't leave well enough alone. I had to interfere, didn't I, and look what my interference has cost us. Everything. Everything's fallen to pieces, and I can't even get away from it inside my own head.

In stages, Tarrant became aware that the girl was tugging at the sleeve of his waistcoat, as she had done the first time he had met her, in the strange vision he had seen in the door. The hatter glanced at her quickly, but she did not seem to be frightened. Or at least, she was not crying, or running away, or curling into a ball or any of the other things that small children might do in unsettling circumstances. Encouraged by that, he put his arm around her shoulders, and gathered her close.

"I can take it back," the girl said, her words muffled by the hatter's shirt. "I'll tell him you don't want it. Or we can throw it away."

She meant the key, Tarrant realized hazily. Alice's key, that someone had taken from her. Someone had torn it away, and washed it clean, and presented it to him, all polished and shining as a button. It was a precious thing; it had been _Alice's_ precious thing, and now this child was proposing to throw it away, as though it were worthless. Throw away something that Alice had given him? He wouldn't do it. If Alice had meant this key for him, then as terrible as it was, he would keep it. He would have to.

But why would the girl even ask?

Tarrant caught the girl by the shoulders, pulling her away until he could see her face.

"Did _he_ tell you to say that?" Tarrant asked coldly. "Is that what he wants me to do? Hide inside my head until I'm too far gone for anything? Tend to my words while everything real that I care about dies?"

The hatter was conveniently forgetting that this was, more or less, what he had planned to do before the girl had ever appeared.

For her part, the child was shaking her head; her green eyes had gone as wide as a deer's. "I'm sorry!" she yelped. "He told me to give it to you, that's all! I didn't mean it!"

The piping fear in her voice punctured the hatter's momentary anger like a needle. She was babbling; it was obvious to the hatter that she had no clear idea of what she was apologizing for, only that she felt she needed to do so. He'd frightened her, and that was entirely unacceptable, no matter what she'd done, or whom she'd been fraternizing with. He shouldn't have shouted at her. The girl had no part in creating this murderous play; what did it matter if she played a small role in its closing scenes? She shouldn't be here at all, thought the hatter. But she _is_ here, and it's my fault. Because she's the one thing I want above everything else.

That was before Alice died, whispered a slow voice in his head. A strange thought, which Tarrant forcefully dismissed as being both unsettling, and entirely irrelevant to the matters at hand.

Tarrant loosened his hands from the girl's shoulders, letting her squirm free of his grip, and wondering what he ought to do, should she run off in tears across the paddock. It did not seem an entirely unlikely supposition. But she wasn't running, merely gripping her own shoulders, fingers running up and down the stitching of the sleeves. He ought to say something to her, only he had no idea what he ought to say.

"You did well," he lisped, in the gentlest voice he could summon. The girl merely looked at him, her green eyes startlingly dark in her too-pale face. Tarrant fumbled for words that might be comforting, without being lies. "I didn't expect this, is all."

The girl's fingers were clawing her own arms so tightly that she was twisting the fabric of her dress, and Tarrant _knew_ that gesture, knew it as intimately as he knew his own name. He remembered it; was well acquainted with such a gesture. He knew how such fingers could crumple the fabric of his sleeves, how such a grip could leave a bruise on the skin caught between thumb and forefinger, how such nails might leave crescent indentations in the skin below. For a moment Tarrant was certain that such desperate fingers were _his_, tearing at his own skin; he was certain _someone_ was watching him - that he might at any moment turn to see a lamplit, leering face.

But there was only the paddock, grown strange to him in the darkness, and the girl, hugging herself because there was no one else whom she trusted to do it. Father to daughter, it seemed such a gesture did not change. Neither might the feelings that inspired it.

In that moment, Tarrant utterly abandoned any notion of clinging to the truth. "Everything's going to be fine," he lied, and held open his arms.

* * *

Strange, thought the hatter some minutes later. I can frighten the living daylights out of the girl, and she still comes back. She still _wants_ to come back. Rather like Alice, actually. At the thought, Tarrant wrapped his arm more tightly around the girl, as though mentioning her in the same breath as her mother might predispose the girl towards vanishing as well. Silly, thought Tarrant. This one can't die. She can't die, because she doesn't really exist.

The girl in question was sprawled in Tarrant's lap, her small weight resting on his left leg, her yellow head pillowed against his shoulder. Not asleep, Tarrant thought, but close to it. At any rate, the girl hadn't moved since she'd gotten herself comfortably arranged; the weight against Tarrant's thigh was threatening pins and needles all the way down to his toes. The hatter might reasonably have tried to rearrange her, but he couldn't quite bring himself to disturb her, or give the girl even the slightest indication that she was not completely welcome exactly where she was.

One rather substantial weight was sitting in his lap; another, smaller weight lay across his palm. The little thing slid against his skin as he flexed his fingers; it felt metallic and feverishly warm. Slowly, Tarrant freed his arm from behind the girl's shoulder, stiffly uncurling his fingers. The hatter watched the tiny key rolling about in his palm like a marble. At any moment, the hatter expected that he would throw the wretched thing over the fence. To have anything to do with it would only mean trouble, the hatter thought. Regardless of whether Alice meant him to have it, Tarrant was not entirely sure that possessing such a key would actually do him any good. If Alice herself was unable to use _his_ key to any productive end, Tarrant was hardly confident of his ability to fare any better. And Tarrant already had ample evidence that he could under no circumstances trust the creature that the key controlled. Supposedly controlled, the hatter corrected, thinking of stiff, mitten-like fingers.

And yet, he wasn't throwing it away.

The hatter found himself tracing the key's curlicued whorls with one finger, stroking it with a sort of unwilling curiosity, almost as though he expected it to suddenly grow fur and begin mewling like a kitten. Tarrant could not quite follow the design; every time he thought he had traced the pattern all the way through, the lines would double back on themselves, so that he couldn't tell where one line began and the next ended. It was mesmerizing; if he didn't already know what it was, he might almost be tempted to call it pretty. And powerful, best not to forget that. As powerful as Alice herself had been. All the lightning of her kisses, all of the hard assurance of her soul. It had to be in there somewhere; it was too terrible to think that it had all simply vanished when she'd died.

The key gleamed in Tarrant's fingers, sparkling silver in the twilight, like the yellow of the girl's hair. They're hers, the hatter thought; these two are the only things of Alice's that were still with him. In fact, they might be the only important things of Alice's that still existed, anywhere. There would be a suit of armor, gathering dust in some high tower room. There was a burnt foundation somewhere in China, with poppy-scented smoke rising from its ashes. There was a mother in London, re-reading months-old letters with foreign postmarks. There was a sister, hadn't she told him once, and an aged cat named Demeter. And now this girl.

Why wasn't he throwing the key away? Tarrant had the unsettling notion that one possible answer to that question was currently sleeping in his lap. The child and the key were Alice's; what Tarrant had done to be entrusted with such treasures, the hatter did not know. They had been Alice's; now, they were his - to use, to protect, or to set aside, should he choose to do so.

* * *

The girl roused only briefly when he lowered her to the grass. He hushed her back to sleep, humming snatches of nonsense for a few happy minutes until her eyes closed. She was sprawled bonelessly on the ground in her taffeta dress, wrinkled now, and covered in grass stains; she was still incalculably beautiful. The girl didn't look cold, but the hatter shrugged out of his waistcoat anyway and laid it across her shoulders. It wasn't as if the coat would do him any good where he was going.

The girl was apparently not as asleep as he had thought; she nestled under the coat and peered up at him, blinking.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"I am going to speak to a friend -," he stumbled over the word. "A friend of your mother's." Tarrant thought he had managed that sentence without twitching. "I should like you to wait here - Quilt will be with you. So will many of the other words, I expect."

"I'll wait," said the girl, in a resigned, sleepy sort of mumble. "Come back soon?"

Tarrant could only nod; he had apparently used up all of his stock of comforting lies at some point earlier in the evening. The hatter knelt, and kissed her, brushing a strand of hair away from her face. Her eyelids were slipping closed; he waited beside her until they had shut entirely, and her breathing had taken on the soft, slow character of dreams.

"I love you," the hatter said, and scrambled to his feet, and turned away. If he stayed even a moment longer he would be promising her all manner of things, promises that might not ever come true. He did not know whether he could come back to her, if things went badly in the reality of the locked room. He didn't know what would happen to the girl if he wished for this dream. He didn't know what would happen if he wished for another.

Tarrant pulled the key from his pocket; for a moment his face twisted in thought, almost as though he were going to speak to it. Then his fingers closed around the key, and he dropped his hand to his side, as though whatever he might have said, the hatter had decided it didn't matter at all. Instead, he smoothed down the curls on his head, and adjusted his top hat to a jauntier angle.

"Well," the hatter said to himself, and stepped out from the paddock and into another place entirely.

* * *

_Credit where credit is due: _

_It is ENTIRELY due to the efforts and badgering of my most critical reviewers that this excerpt exists at all. I especially want to thank ILoveYourCreativity, for questioning Foris' morals, and Red Room Flare, for sensing gothic elements in the story before I realized they were there myself. They (and others) kept badgering me for more of a resolution to the locked room puzzle, and a better ending; such things I am hopeful that I shall be able to provide. Eventually, 'cause it ain't done yet. Also, cheers to Anonymous Plume, for recently reviewing several chapters, and to darkbangle, for pointing out that there was a baby metaphor in the epilogue that I hadn't actually noticed. (Seriously – you guys are tons better at interpreting my story than I am, and I love it.)_

_And quotes - The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes is from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. A Dylan Thomas villanelle makes a reappearance; the fire and ice quote is from a poem by Robert Frost. _

_Jim Butcher's recent book Changes deserves a shout-out for influencing aspects of Tarrant's relationship with the dream. Butcher's Dresden series is fantastic for presenting Faustian bargains and moral dilemmas; I would recommend his works to anyone even remotely into dark fantasy._

_Some sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that there is still nothing overt about how Tarrant is going to solve the locked room puzzle – although those of you who read the original epilogue do know that he eventually does. That aspect of the ending won't be changing, though a number of other things will. So, yes, there is at least one more chapter on the way, as well as a revised epilogue._

_I have gone back to listing this as an in-progress story, as in its current form it doesn't have an ending. It will be finished, but I still have work to do before that happens. _

_Want to see the new material sooner, or have a burning idea for what ought to happen, or what I've gotten wrong? There's a review button at the bottom of the screen – you know what to do._


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